Arete Xu is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and designer with experience in museum work. She is from Aotearoa, New Zealand and is also shaped by years in Brazil and China. Her practice echoes her three homes, her three hearts.

  Xu’s work excavates personal and collective stories within the diaspora experience. She reimagines origin stories for diasporic worlds through sculpture, digital media and performance. Her practice moves between traditional craft mediums and conceptual performance to examine myths of memory, ownership and identity. She hopes to build a new digital folklore, one that resonates with the absence, saudade, and the elusive belonging of ‘in-between’ existence.

Xu’s interest in museums and public institutions stems from a commitment to make amends with absences through museum curation, public programming, and education. Her research in museum archives and institutional histories informs new frameworks of representation. 

Xu’s research background also intersects with her passion for linguistic justice. Having acquired fluency in Mandarin Chinese, English and Portuguese, she connects with diverse audiences in varying registers through arts journalism. Recently, she extended this interest by conducting research in AI language Models and translation mechanisms. 

Arete is pursuing a BFA in Sculpture and concentration in Theory and History of Art and Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has recently worked with the RISD Museum, Pao Arts Centre, and the RISD Center for Arts and Language.