Ningfei (Shannon) Xiao

Healing Matrix

My PhD transdisciplinary creative research, the Healing Matrix, explores shamanic healing as ‘spiritual technologies’ to rethink and reorient architecture and art practices. These technologies reimagine design and art concepts and methods, responding to urban spaces within the posthuman era. Through my practice, I have developed projects within the Healing Matrix that draw on the interplay between visual and non-visual, human and non-human characteristics-shamanic rituals, tree bark, Taniwha water spirits, qi and mauri (life force and cosmic energies). These creative techniques enact matrices of shamanic healing that perform the urban everyday, while revealing —and healing— the material and spiritual unseen within colonial, masculinist, and urbanized environments. I situate myself within the shamanic practices of nomadic Ewengki/Evenki women and traditional Chinese healing from my homeland, China, while weaving these practices with the matriarchal traditions of Māori Rongoā healers in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. This research has led to the creation of collaborative, site-responsive art and architecture works in Pōneke, Wellington. Healing Matrix embraces the city as a testing ground for collaborative art and architecture installations, performances, and autoethnographic writing and audiovisualizations. The research evolves into a social-environmental-spatial act, in relation to multi-species, multi-ethnic, women, and Indigenous presence. It is a plural process of being and becoming with, reimagining, caring for, and curating the layered dynamics of urban space. I grew up in China and earned a Master of Architecture from Tongji University, Shanghai, with study exchanges in Germany, Czechia, and Japan. Before embarking on my PhD and tutoring at the Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation in 2022, I have practiced as an architect, artist, musician, researcher, and journal editor in China. My collaborative architectural works have received recognition, including the 2021 AIA Shanghai|Beijing Design Award. My art and design projects have been exhibited at various exhibitions and festivals in China and Aotearoa, including Whirinaki Whare Taonga Arts Centre (Wellington, 2024), Fringe Festival (Wellington, 2024), Te Auaha Gallery (Wellington, 2023), Enjoy Art Museum (Beijing, 2021), UP-ON International Live Art Festival (Chengdu, 2020), and Power Station of Art (Shanghai, 2018). My transdisciplinary, creative research has been presented and is planned for presentation at a range of conferences and publications across Europe, the UK, the US, China, Australia, and Aotearoa, covering fields such as architecture and design, fine art, performance, music, urban research, spirituality, posthumanism, and feminism.

Supervisors

Dr Simon Twose & Dr Hannah Hopewell

Publications

Journal Publication

Xiao, N, Twose, S., and Hopewell, H. Forthcoming. "Relational Encounters in Urban Public Spaces: A Feminist Posthuman Autoethnographic Becoming of a Site-Specific Performance." User Experiences and Urban Creativity Journal 6, no. 1 (2024).

Zhang, H., and Xiao, N. Colors and Poetic Everydayness: Renovation of Dongshan Meat and Vegetable Market. Architectural Technique Journal, March 2022.

Architectural Practice: Waterfront Space. Edited by [Zheng, X. and Xiao, N.]. January 2020. Architectural Practice: 1-208. (208 pages).

Architectural Practice: Beyond Workplace. Edited by [Xu, S. and Xiao, N.]. March 2020. Architectural Practice: 1-208. (208 pages).

Architectural Practice: Build-ing. Edited by [Xu, S., Xiao, N. and Qiao, X.]. June 2020. Architectural Practice: 1-208. (208 pages).

Liu, M., Ke J., Xiao N., and Cheng X. "Transformation Strategies of the Urban Old Community Suitable for the Aged Based on CRS Architectural Programming: A Case Study of Tongji New Community." Design Community 2015, no. 4 (2015): 81-87. https://doi.org/10.3969/j.issn.1674-9073.2015.04.026.

Awards

2022-2024

Wellington Doctoral Scholarship, 2022

Public Art Fund, Wellington City Council, 2023

Finalist, Wellington Regional Arts Review, 2024

Contact

ningfei.xiao@vuw.ac.nz

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