Where could UAL take you?

Where could UAL take you? is a series of stories from Post-Grad community where we interview UAL postgrads about their project and the awards they have won.

For this second edition, we are talking to Francisco Cortés, an MA Illustration and Visual Media graduate, who won the First Prize at the HISENSE x VIDAA Art Competition after seeing it on the Post-Grad Community Newsletter.

Hi Francisco!  Can you tell us about your award and why you decided to pursue it?

Earlier this year I won First Prize at the HISENSE x VIDAA Art Competition, judged by British art historian, curator and broadcaster Kate Bryan, known for her work with Sky Arts. The competition invited artists worldwide to submit work for VIDAA Art, a platform showing selected artworks on Hisense smart TVs globally.

My winning piece, The Poetry of Freedom, is a surreal, meditative space built with Cinema 4D and Octane Render, part of an ongoing series exploring the idea of inhabiting. Its elements read as interior spaces, though they sit within an open environment that shifts between inside and outside; the palette, textures and forms evoke stillness and warmth. More than a physical landscape, it's a mental representation of quiet and freedom.

Kate mentioned that the piece stayed with her from the first time she saw it, and that she could picture it inhabiting her own home. The prize included £1,000, a Hisense Canvas TV sent to my home, and my work shown on the VIDAA Art platform.

Throughout my MA at UAL, and through conversations with my tutor and my peers, the concept of "inhabiting" gathered force and took on a more formal shape, until it became the central subject of my research, my thesis and my current practice. In this sense, this award-winning piece and the works I have made recently are part of a larger conversation that I keep trying to build on around the concept of inhabiting. The central question of my thesis was: does inhabiting take place only within physical architecture, or might we also inhabit other spaces, such as the mind, the body, a poem or a song? My works, then, are the result of exploring that question.

Where did you first hear about the opportunity?

Through the Post-Grad Community Newsletter in December 2025. I was at a turning point at the time: a design studio outside London had offered me a job as a 3D designer, and after a lot of thought, I turned it down to focus on my own practice and apply to as many competitions and exhibitions as I could.

One afternoon, while working in the library and properly going through the Post-Grad Community Newsletter, I came across competition. My first instinct was actually to doubt whether I had any chance. It felt quite far out of reach. After talking to a friend, I realised I had nothing to lose. I already had a strong piece that I believed in, so why leave it sitting on my hard drive instead of giving it another opportunity?

What appealed to me was the chance to see whether my work could connect internationally, beyond my home country of Mexico, and the possibility of connecting with other artists and institutions if I was selected.

The application itself was surprisingly straightforward. I spent a couple of hours adapting the piece to the required resolution and colour profile and submitted it through the official portal.

How did you feel being awarded this achievement?

First, I was incredibly happy simply to hear that I had been shortlisted among hundreds of entries as one of 20 artists. We were invited to a group exhibition at the Dolby Screening Room in Soho, where the overall winner would be announced.

I went with some close friends and we spent a very special evening talking to the other shortlisted artists and even had the opportunity to meet Kate Bryan. It already felt like an honour to see my work alongside such strong pieces across photography, painting, digital art and 3D. When Kate announced Third Prize, then Second Prize, and finally my name, I went into a kind of limbo. It felt like a surreal moment, fittingly for a surreal piece, and almost like something that would normally happen only in my imagination or dreams. I took the microphone feeling excited and nervous at the same time, with a flash of imposter syndrome, but also an enormous sense of gratitude and confidence after years of work and perseverance. My friends and I were jumping with excitement afterwards. It became one of those days that will always be part of the history of our friendship.

My family lives outside the UK, so I couldn't share the moment with them in person. I called one of my sisters while I was walking through London afterwards, and we were both laughing and shouting down the phone. It is a moment I won't forget.

A few days later, I shared the news with my MA tutor and thanked her for her guidance. It made me realise that perhaps the most valuable thing I took from the MA wasn't simply the UAL qualification, but finding one word capable of connecting my past and present, my drawing, 3D, music, architecture and research within the same practice: “inhabiting”.

What role did Post-Grad Community and UAL have in your project?

Without the Post-Grad Community's regular newsletters, I genuinely don't think I would have discovered this competition, and I'm very grateful for the work they do in keeping the community informed about fresh and timely opportunities.

Beyond that, one of the things I value most from my time at UAL is the friendship and creative community that grew between my MA classmates, tutors and me. Those relationships didn't end when we graduated. We don't just see each other socially; we're constantly sharing opportunities, open calls and projects, and we have organised group exhibitions together.

In May this year, my former tutors invited me back to LCC as a Special Invited Lecturer, where I delivered a lecture and workshop titled Inhabiting as Research and Practice to the current MA Illustration and Visual Media students. It was very meaningful to return to the same course from a different perspective, and it expanded that community to include a new generation of students. We're now hoping to get as many generations of MA Illustration and Visual Media students and alumni as possible together at a pub soon!

Where do you hope being awarded this opportunity will take you?

The clearest lesson has been about trying and persevering. “The Poetry of Freedom” piece had previously been submitted to another art opportunity and wasn't accepted. Winning First Prize with exactly the same piece taught me that not every artwork belongs everywhere. Sometimes a piece simply needs to find the place where it belongs. Finding that place, and receiving one “yes” among many “noes”, can sometimes be exactly the external encouragement you need to keep creating and believing in what you are doing.

The award gave me the confidence to submit my work much more actively. Since then, Inhabiting the Mind: Constellations was longlisted for the World Illustration Awards 2026; my series “Soy la noche” was selected for the 17th Ibero-American Catalogue of Illustration and will be exhibited at the Guadalajara International Book Fair; and I have participated in group exhibitions in London including Secret 7” at 180 Studios, presented by War Child, and ¡Viva Frida! at the Embassy of Mexico in the UK.

Looking ahead, I want to continue developing my own visual language and have an increasingly active presence in exhibitions. I would love eventually to create a solo exhibition, perhaps bringing together visual art and sound around a particular theme, or even as a retrospective of a body of work. I would also like to continue teaching. Sharing my experience with students is something I genuinely enjoy, particularly because I always feel that I am learning from them too.

If you could give a new postgraduate 1 piece of advice, what would that be?

Apply. Don't reject your own work before somebody else has even had the chance to see it. Only a few of all the competitions, exhibitions and open calls you apply to will result in a “yes”, and you can never know in advance which ones those will be. So keep sending your work out into the world. Give it the opportunity to find the place where it belongs.

Francisco Cortés is a Mexican visual artist based in London. His practice explores "inhabiting": whether we inhabit only physical architecture, or also the mind, the body, a poem, a song. Through 3D, digital illustration and graphite, he creates surreal spaces where solitude, silence and contemplation take form.

Get in touch with Francisco on his website or via email at francisco.cortes.di@gmail.com

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You can email us at pgcommunity@arts.ac.uk.

Post-Grad Stories

Post-Grad Stories is a thriving online platform of postgraduate voices. Here you can share thought-provoking experiences, practices, thoughts and articles about what matters to you.

Do you have a story you want to share? You can email us at pgcommunity@arts.ac.uk.