Ningfei (Shannon) Xiao

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 artistic concepts and methods, responding to contemporary urban spatial contexts. 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, birch bark, Erbanlakan (tent), 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 settler-colonial, masculinist, and urbanised 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 and communities 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 audiovisualisations, influenced by decolonial, feminist posthuman perspectives. The research evolves into a social-environmental-spatial act, in relation to multi-species, multi-ethnic, migratory, women, and Indigenous presence. It presents a relational process of becoming, knowing, and knowledge-making within 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, academic researcher, teacher, 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 Aotearoa, Australia, China, UK, Peru, and Chile, including Whirinaki Whare Taonga Arts Centre (Wellington, 2024), Fringe Arts Bath Festival (Bath, 2025), Fringe Festival (Wellington, 2024), f.stop Photo Fair (Auckland, Pichilemu, 2025), 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 at a range of conferences and publications across America, Europe, the UK, Asia, and Australasia, covering fields such as architecture and design, sustainability, fine art, performance, music, urban research, spirituality, posthumanism, and feminism.

Xiao, N., Twose, S., & Hopewell, H. (forthcoming). Habitat of Hawaiki: Insights on collective knowledge-making in creative research. In Urban water equity and justice across the Pacific Rim: Chapter planning and design for just urban water resilience. Springer. (Water Security in a New World series).

Xiao, N., Twose, S., & 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(1).

Zhang, H., & Xiao, N. (2022, March). Colors and poetic everydayness: Renovation of Dongshan meat and vegetable market. Architectural Technique Journal.

Zheng, X., & Xiao, N. (Eds.). (2020, January). Architectural practice: Waterfront space (pp. 1–208). Architectural Practice.

Xu, S., & Xiao, N. (Eds.). (2020, March). Architectural practice: Beyond workplace (pp. 1–208). Architectural Practice.

Xu, S., Xiao, N., & Qiao, X. (Eds.). (2020, June). Architectural practice: Build-ing (pp. 1–208). Architectural Practice.

Liu, M., Ke, J., Xiao, N., & Cheng, X. (2015). 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(4), 81–87. https://doi.org/10.3969/j.issn.1674-9073.2015.04.026

“A Feminist Posthuman Autoethnographic Becoming of a Transdisciplinary Creative Research Practice.”  
Paper presented at the Conference on Women Who Create, London Arts-Based Research Centre. April 2024.

“Embodied Reimagining.”  
Paper presented at the AAANZ Conference on Past, Present, and Possible Futures, School of Art and Design, Australian National University. December 2024.

“Healing Matrix: An Autoethnography of the Visual and/or Non-Visual Becoming of a Spatial Installation Exhibition.”  
Paper presented at the Conference on Sacred Arts, London Arts-Based Research Centre. May 2024.

“Relational Encounters in Urban Public Spaces: A Feminist Posthuman Autoethnographic Becoming of a Site-Specific Performance.”  
Paper presented at the Urban Creativity Conference on Ubiquity, Lisbon Faculty of Fine Arts. June 2024.

“Performing Dialogue(s) Before Sunset: A Feminist Posthuman Autoethnography along Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington Harbour.”  
Paper presented at the In(visible) Publics: Performing (Non)Belonging Online Conference, University College Dublin, School of Music. September 2024.

“Curating Cityscapes: Ways for Thinking and Performing Spaces of Becoming.”  
Paper presented at the Nineteenth International Conference on Design Principles and Practices: Thinking, Learning, Doing – Plural Ways of Design, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. February 2025.

“Habitat of Hawaiki: Insights on Collective Knowledge-Making in Creative Research.”  
Paper presented at the APRU Conference on Sustainable Cities and Landscapes, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. June 2025.