Soft Threshold: An immersive cultural encounter between East and West (an immersive multi-sensory experience )

In an age of acceleration, we gather to remember slower ways of being human.

Soft Threshold is an immersive multi-sensory experience exploring the meeting of cultures through space, sound, scent, objects, and storytelling. Rather than offering a guided path, the event invites attendees to move through a layered environment where different traditions of beauty, ritual, and healing come into dialogue.

In response to this year’s theme of Multiplicity, the experience considers how people today live across cultural influences, layered identities, and changing worlds. By bringing Eastern, Western, and Mediterranean sensibilities into a shared sensory space, the gathering asks how art and culture can help create new forms of belonging in an age increasingly shaped by speed, fragmentation, and AI.

Soft Threshold is the public preface to World Culture Salon — a new international cultural series presented by One Culture Foundation, designed to bring the deepest aesthetics of different civilizations into contemporary life through art, music, scent, and shared experience. The series itself begins in July with Chapter I: Greece.

Event Schedule

2:00 – 2:30 PM · Opening Remarks & Conversation Welcome, opening reflections, and a three-voice exchange between East, West, and the Mediterranean.

2:30 – 2:50 PM · Piano Performance & Pause A musical threshold bridging Eastern and Western traditions.

2:50 – 4:45 PM · Immersive Exhibition Open exploration of scent, sound, and ritual objects — a layered sensory environment to move through at your own pace.

4:45 – 5:00 PM · Send-Off A soft closing, with details on Chapter I: Greece in July.

Speakers & Performers

Kayci Bi · Honorary Chair, World Culture Salon.

Through a rich diplomatic life and extensive cultural engagement across Asia, North America, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, Kayci Bi has become a long-time advocate for Greek culture on the global stage. A Founding Board Member and Cultural Advisor of One Culture Foundation, she serves as Honorary Chair of World Culture Salon. In July, she will host Chapter I: Greece, an intimate gathering at the Consulate General of Greece in San Francisco.

Evelisa Genova · Artist; Executive Director, DrawBridge

A Sicilian-Canadian painter, cultural strategist, and Harvard-trained leader, Evelisa Genova is the Executive Director of DrawBridge, a Bay Area nonprofit that has provided trauma-informed expressive arts programs to children in shelters and underserved communities for 35 years. Her own painting practice, known as the Painting Oracle, draws from Jungian dream symbolism, surrealist allegory, and the Mediterranean tradition, exploring intuition, feminine power, and the inner landscapes that words cannot reach. Her recent curatorial work includes The Art of San Francisco at Embarcadero Center, in partnership with BXP.

Dr. Tong Zhang · Pianist; Founder & Artistic Director, Aetna Music & Arts Foundation

Dr. Tong Zhang is a pianist, arts and cultural leader, and the Founder and Artistic Director of the Aetna Music & Arts Foundation, an organization dedicated to advancing well-being and community connection through music and the arts. Trained in China and the United States, Dr. Zhang holds degrees in piano performance and literature from the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Her work bridges Eastern and Western musical traditions, fostering dialogue, healing, and cultural connection.

Xinye Lin · Artist; Founding Curator, World Culture Salon; President, One Culture Foundation.

Multidisciplinary artist and curator working at the intersection of culture, healing, and sensory art. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (M.Arch), her multi-sensory installations have been presented at the United Nations Headquarters, Times Square, CHSA Museum, CICA Museum, and other international institutions. She is the author of Artful Awakening: Multisensory Art and Meditation, a book exploring Eastern philosophy, contemporary art, and sensory healing practices, now distributed in 28 countries and held in the collections of the Clyfford Still Museum, the RISD library, and San Mateo County Libraries. Following her 2025 SF Design Week immersive exhibition Inside of Nebula, Xinye founded World Culture Salon to extend her multi-sensory healing curatorial practice into the field of cross-cultural dialogue.

About the Series

World Culture Salon is the flagship cultural program of One Culture Foundation — an international dialogue series that uses sensory experience as its medium. Each gathering focuses on one civilization, bringing its most enduring aesthetics into the present moment. This evening is the public preface to the series in San Francisco. From here, in partnership with consulates and cultural institutions across multiple countries, World Culture Salon will unfold The Divine Feminine Travels throughout 2026 — a journey across civilizations exploring beauty and creative force, beginning with Chapter I: Greece in July.