Rachel Zheng

Rachel Zheng is a curator, designer, researcher, and educator whose work explores the intersections of exhibition-making, spatial practice, and visual culture. Her research focuses on exhibition space as an active form of discourse, examining how spatial organization, materiality, circulation, and modes of display shape the production and reception of cultural narratives. Drawing on critical museum studies, curatorial theory, and histories of art and design, she is particularly interested in the relationship between contemporary exhibition practices and their local cultural, social, and institutional contexts.

Her recent research investigates the increasing spatial homogenization of contemporary art spaces across global contexts and considers site-specificity and cultural context as methodological frameworks for developing locally responsive approaches to exhibition-making. Her curatorial practice extends these questions through interdisciplinary exhibitions that bring together spatial design, critical research, and public engagement.

Zheng holds an MA in Global Arts and Cultures from Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in Art and Technology from China Academy of Art. Her teaching and research engage global histories of art, architecture, and design while emphasizing the ways exhibitions and institutions mediate knowledge, visibility, and cultural meaning.