a poco art archive is pleased to announce “Ritual to the Sun: If the Body is a Map and Art is a Portal,” a group exhibition that examines the intersection of artistic practice and ecological reverence. Running from March 8 to April 19, 2025, we brings together works by Charles Arnoldi, Charles Liu, Jian-Jun Zhang, Jinseok Choi, KEF!, Kenneth Morehouse, Nancy Evans, Wang Yiming, and Xiangxi Zhang. Through diverse approaches, these artists collectively explore themes of materiality, artistic labor, and environmental precarity, examining the fluid intersections between nature, the cosmos, and feminist embodiments. “Ritual to the Sun” explores art as both devotion and navigation, revealing how creative practice bridges body and spirit, nature and creation. The exhibition reflects on the body as a vessel of lived experience—marked by history, labor, and transformation—while artists, like ancient civilizations aligning with celestial cycles, map their own relationship to time, place, and materiality through gestures of making and meaning. In this context, art becomes a portal—an entryway into deeper ecological consciousness and a call to attune ourselves to the urgent realities of environmental precarity. Inspired by Martha Graham’s Acts of Light (1981) and poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)—both rooted in and pioneers of feminist discourse—this exhibition examines the interplay of movement, light, gender, and agency. Through the vision of curator Ann Shi and participating artists—many resonating with the ethos of the California Light and Space Movement—the exhibition reimagines choreography, poetry, and the labor-intensive processes of visual art as interconnected forms of reciprocity. Here, creation is not depletion but regeneration—an offering to the natural world and the unseen forces that shape our collective experience. An opening reception will be held on March 8, 5–9 PM, featuring an interactive healing performance by BenBen Lei on April 19th and an artist panel (date TBD but stay tuned). About the Curator: Ann Shi is an independent curator, art advisor, archivist, and USPAP-compliant art appraiser specializing in 20th-century Chinese paintings. Born into a family of artists and collectors in classical ink paintings, music and drama, Shi has a deep appreciation for multidisciplinary art forms that connect time, materials, and spaces. She holds a BA and MMath with Honours in Mathematics from Oxford University and an MA in Art Business from Sotheby's Institute of Art, and was formerly a risk officer in the hedge funds over her six-year banking career. Her curatorial approach often explores the intersectionality on various accounts, from classical Chinese ink art, literati lineage, and contemporary expressions, shifting between indigenous and external perspectives within her cultural and gender identity, fostering fresh perspectives that contest the notion of Asian art with an aim to gradually dissolve physical and metaphorical borders of races, genders and geography. (Instagram: @annonymous_cynist) About the Space: a poco art archive is an independent creator’s space and curatorial incubator located in Culver City, dedicated to showcasing innovative and thought-provoking works and foster cultural dialogue. As an intimate space that defies conventionality, we aim to transform the act of archiving into a curatorial project and artistic labor—where ideas, processes, and dialogues are continuously cultivated, challenging static notions of “archive” while embracing the fluidity of creative evolution. (Instagram: @a.poco.art.collective)