Shi’s painting practice explores the narrative potential of the image as a site of tension—between species, symbols, and systems of control. Through layered compositions that incorporate hybrid elements such as urban birds, fragmented human gestures, and marks of disruption, she investigates how different forms of life coexist, clash, or are regulated within shared environments. Rather than working purely symbolically, her figures operate as epistemological “interrupters” that challenge stable notions of agency, identity, and visibility. Grounded in research across ecology, semiotics, and affect theory, her work invites viewers to engage with the ambiguity of presence and the porousness of boundaries—between human and non-human, order and disorder, visibility and erasure.