RISE by Henley Festival Emerging Artist Prize 2026 - Runner Up

Yuchen Ge is a UK-based Chinese artist and art historian whose work explores the intersections of dreams, imagination, visual memory, and art history. Working primarily across painting and print, her work contemplates historical reference and imagination, bridging the experience of art at present and the predominant sentiment of history in art.

Yuchen Ge holds an MSc by Research in History of Art from the University of Edinburgh and an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London. She previously studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (China), where she was selected by the university for an exchange semester at Kingston University, London, in recognition of her academic merit.

Yuchen Ge’s work has been exhibited in the UK, Ireland, Italy, and China, including the XV Florence Biennale 2025 and the Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland. Yuchen’s work has been featured in Stanford Magazine as a part of the collection of the renowned art historian Alexander Nemerov. In 2022, her work The Story of Tonight (etching) was acquired by Goldsmiths, University of London Fine Art Print Archive, which is now a
part of the permanent collection of the Goldsmiths Print Studio, London, UK.

Yuchen Ge’s practice investigates the ways in which historical imagery and ongoing intellectual inquiry jointly shape visual forms: an imaginary history. Through traditional oil-painting glazing techniques and a research-driven approach, her practice explores an alternative reality – one in which a Baroque theatricality and Rococo ornamentality are
reactivated through contemporary painterly language.