This week on What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza is joined by Ann Shi, a nomadic curator and founder of a poco art collective, whose deeply intuitive curatorial practice bridges Chinese literati aesthetics, feminist mysticism, and contemporary Asian diasporic identity. With roots in China, academic training in Oxford and at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and early career experience on Wall Street, Ann’s nonlinear path defies institutional expectations, illuminating how curating can become both an embodied ritual and an act of cultural translation.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Ann reflects on growing up as the daughter of a classical inkwash painter and an opera singer, both devoted Buddhist practitioners who observed the Five Precepts, embodying compassion and discipline in daily life—a grounding that continues to shape how calligraphy, voice, and ritual manifest in her exhibitions. Drawing on her time as Associate Curator at Rice University’s Chao Center for Asian Studies, she reflects on how oral histories and immigrant archives shaped her curatorial voice and informed her efforts to platform Asian art beyond the Western gaze.

Together, Ann and Javier unpack the tension between authenticity and market sustainability, the legacy of the literati tradition in Chinese art, and the complicated dynamics of Asian representation within museum and gallery systems. They also explore Ann’s use of feng shui, the five elements, and feminine archetypes—like the goddess Nüwa—as curatorial frameworks that honor the unseen and elevate spiritual intuition over spectacle.

The episode closes with a discussion of “Nüwa’s Garden: A Summer Offering in Clay, Fire, and Water,” Ann’s recent show at Charles Arnoldi Studio in Venice Beach, and its irreverent, ritual-infused closing celebration featuring live performances and feminist mythologies.

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