X Zhu-Nowell is curator, writer, and institutional practitioner based between Shanghai and New York.
Their is Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM), Shanghai. Their practice is shaped by relational authorship and an ontological approach to curating that resists demands for coherence, instead working through contradiction, displacement, and the labor of (mis)translation. Zhu-Nowell’s work examines how exhibitions, institutions, and publics are continually reshaped by globalism, migration, and the hidden infrastructures of cultural exchange—particularly in the long aftermath of twentieth-century geopolitical crises. Zhu-Nowell lectures internationally on curatorial practice, institutional form, and transnational histories of art, and has contributed writings to catalogs, journals, and experimental publishing platforms. They regularly collaborate with artists such as Wang Shui, Irena Haiduk, Wu Tsang, Tosh Basco, Shubigi Rao, Ming Wong, Cici Wu, Diane Severin Nguyen, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Kandis Williams, 44 Monthly, Wong Kit Yi, and Jota Mombaça, among others. Prior to joining RAM, Zhu-Nowell was a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014–2021). Their exhibition Wu Tsang: Anthem was named one of the best exhibitions of 2021 by The New York Times, and they were part of the curatorial team for Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World.