DIANA GUO

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Snow Bank
Seeking Abundance
Transpacific Index
Agency for Environmental Migration
Migrating to Mutualism
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Still Water
04–25–25

Thresholds (MIT Press) 
Edited by Joshua Tan and Mingjia Chen
Graphic Design Adrienne Hugh


Peer Reviewed Publication  Established in 1992, Thresholds is the annual peer-reviewed journal produced by the MIT Department of Architecture. Each independently themed issue features content from leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of architecture, art, and culture. 
Category
Publication 
Making Transpacific Kin
04–28–23

Harvard GSD Design Studies Award  
MAKING TRANSPACIFIC KIN is an edited volume on the bioregulation of ‘invasive’ foreign flora and fauna species across borders, featuring an index, archive, and A-Z glossary. Recipient of the GSD Domain Prize. 
Category
Publication

Curator at Kirkland Gallery
2022-2023


Curator in Residence, with Maggie Chen, Galena Sardamova, Xiaoji Zhou (2022) & Youtian Duan, Lafina Eptaminitaki, Yunsong Liu, & Galena Sardamova (2023). 

Artists: Sky Araki-Russell, Benjamin Good, Jeannelle Fernandez, Benson Joseph, Joseph Kennedy, Alisha Kapoor, Haewon Ma, Sabrina Madera, Paola Ovando Peraza, Angélica Oteiza, Pin Sangkaeo, Zachary Schumacher, Sahar Simforoosh, Annie Simpson, August Sklar, Jialei Tang Exhibitions curated at Kirkland Gallery include YES, BUT ALSO, organized during International Womxn’s Week to question and expand definitions of womanhood; MIS(INTERPRETATIONS), which reexamined everyday gendered objects and their cultural associations; and 9 FANTASY GIRLS, a playful exploration of identity, fantasy, and transformation beyond physical form. SOUVENIRS IN SITU (2023) was a public project featuring clotheslines with religious garments installed across iconic Montreal landscapes, offering a quiet protest against Quebec’s Bill 21. OPERATIONAL DOUBLES (2022) explored themes of imitation and reality, drawing on media and digital culture. NOTHING SPECIAL, REALLY (2022) explored materiality and perception through elements such as color, proportion, placement, detail, scale, and texture, featuring works that engaged with tininess and enormity, cracks and sheen, softness and sharpness. Each exhibition brought together emerging artists and experimental formats to engage timely social and political issues.
Category
Curatorial, Exhibition
Agency for Environmental Migration
05–16–22

With Alisha Kapoor, Alexandra Barnes, and Margaux Wheelock-Shew. 

Radcliffe Symposium Project  An open-source digital archive of stories and the changing landscapes of climatic migration across North America. The platform works twofold; firstly, by mapping the movement of humans, plants, and animals through an interactive map that then categorizes the climatic impetus for travel; secondly, by recording the journey using transcribed audio, soundscapes, and a collected object from the place of origin or travel that holds an embodied memory of place. The collection is then assembled into a narrative quilt–with stories, objects, and maps stitched together as patchworks–to serve as a mnemonic device for future generations to connect with and, second, as an engaged artifact that holds and mirrors the changing landscapes over time.

Category
Conference, Multimedia
Watery Abundance
12–17–22 

With Tianwei Li, Gwich’in Tribal Council. 

Recipient of Award of Excellence from ASLA, American Society of Landscape Architects. 


In collaboration with the Gwich’in Tribal Council, the body of work explores how design can sustain Indigenous foodways and undo settler infrastructure. Working with Gwich’in youth and community members, the project examines the impacts of the Dempster Highway—originally built for oil and mining—on land, climate, and caribou migration. The design proposes selective highway decommissioning and material reuse along riverways to restore traditional harvesting routes. Anchored by a community recipe book, the work frames food as ritual, material, and knowledge, positioning design as a decolonial practice rooted in reciprocity and relational care.
Category
Award, Landscape Research 

Gwich’in Cookbook
04–23–22

With Tianwei Li, Adrienne Hugh, and Gwich’in Tribal Council 

Recipient of Fellowship from Weatherhead Center & Mellon Urban Initiative Grant. 
Commissioned by the Gwich’in Tribal Council, this recipe book emerges from a research collaboration to celebrate and sustain Indigenous foodways. Framed as a living archive of traditional food knowledge, it gathers recipes, stories, and practices rooted in land, seasonality, and kinship. This book reclaims food as both resistance and care. Each entry reflects not just a dish, but a way of being—honoring food as ritual, memory, and relational knowledge passed through generations. 

Category
Publication, Award

Rooted in Reverence
05–23–23

Chinese Ginseng Root Culinary Experience
With Justin Ng 


Rooted in Reverence explores the intertwined culinary, medicinal, and spiritual histories of ginseng across East Asia and the Far Eastern frontier. Known for its difficult cultivation and miraculous properties, ginseng has been revered as both sacred plant and elite commodity—from Tang dynasty tea culture to contemporary herbal medicine.

Through historical texts, ethnobotanical studies, and regional practices like the Taiga Law, this project traces ginseng’s role in shaping cultural beliefs, social rituals, and ecological knowledge among Manchurian, Korean, Chinese, Mongolian, and Russian communities. By following the root’s journey from forest floor to teacup, the research reveals how ginseng embodies the deep connections between landscape, labor, and reverence.
Category
Landscape Research

Urban Wilds
08–13–22

With Jill Desimini, Ellen Wong   Urban wilds—successional landscapes shaped by ecological processes in the wake of human disturbance—occupy a paradoxical position in the city. They bear witness to histories of transformation while gesturing toward more ecologically attuned futures. Unlike remote wilderness, they are porous, entangled with human activity, and largely excluded from policy and public recognition. This research critically documents five urban wilds in the Boston area to foreground their role as informal commons—sites of encounter, memory, and resistance within the urban fabric.

Category
Publication, Landscape Research
©Diana Guo 2025© All works.