Conversations

Cassi Zheng and Claire Shiying Li

A conversation between Claire Shiying Li and Cassi Zheng, co-founder of AURAWELL

Shangri-La Forest, Yunnan, China. Courtesy of Cassi Zheng.

Claire Shiying Li: Let’s start at the beginning. Was there a specific moment when AURAWELL became inevitable?

Cassi Zheng: Yes. It wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet. Megenta and I were in Shangri-La, supposedly looking for mushrooms in a pine forest after rain. We had little baskets. But it turned into a slow, mindful walk. The air smelled like wet pine needles and crushed grass. I remember stopping at a fallen log covered in impossibly bright green moss. I leaned in and inhaled. It felt like breathing in the color green itself. Cold. Clean. Ancient. That scent didn’t just stay in my nose. It settled somewhere deeper. That was the first seed.

CSL: So AURAWELL began as a smell?

CZ: As a sensation. When we returned to Shanghai and continued running our advertising agency, something had shifted. We were helping other brands find their voice every day. Strategy decks. Positioning. Narratives. And then a quiet question kept interrupting our meetings: What is our own voice? Not a brand voice. A real one. That’s when we start formulating Aurawell’s ethos: the healing power of nature. 

CSL: At PROVENCE we often talk about atmosphere. About how spaces feel before we talk about what they mean. Last year at Basel Social Club, we included AURAWELL incense in our setting. It wasn’t decoration. It changed the room. There is something about scent that bypasses the intellectual layer.

CZ: Exactly. It moves faster than language. That’s also why we began with incense and candles. They’re foundational. They don’t shout. We knew we weren’t perfumers, so we didn’t pretend to be. We became translators. We immersed ourselves in Ming dynasty incense texts to decode the philosophy behind materials. Why sandalwood for focus? Why clove for warmth? We brought those ancient “briefs” to professional studios and kept asking: Does this feel like temple silence? Does it ground you like forest soil?

Shangri-La Forest, Yunnan, China. Courtesy of Cassi Zheng.

CSL: There’s a similarity to how PROVENCE works. We often operate between research and intuition. Between archive and contemporary life. It’s never nostalgic. It’s about translation.

CZ: That resonates. For me, temple stays in Kyoto, humid Bangkok night markets, meditation retreats in Bali — all of it was less about spirituality and more about attention. Meanwhile, my co-founder Megenta was mapping something else. She observed our generation’s nervous system. The constant sensory overload. Social anxiety. The digital hum that never stops. So we weren’t making “Zen Temple.” We were creating something for overstimulation. A scent as anchor.

CSL: That feels very aligned with what PROVENCE has been circling around recently — this idea that the art world is accelerating while artists are asked to absorb more and more pressure. We speak about resistance not as opposition, but as slowing down. As recalibration.

CZ: Yes. That’s the word. AURAWELL is not escapism. It’s recalibration. When PROVENCE invited us into the Basel Social Club setting last year, I remember thinking how natural it felt. Not because it was a “brand collaboration,” but because it was about atmosphere. About the invisible layer that shapes encounter. Art, like scent, operates in that invisible field.

CSL: And perhaps both insist on something increasingly rare — attention.

CZ: Exactly. Nothing dramatic. No grand narrative. Just a slow convergence. My intuitive experiences. Megenta’s psychological clarity. Professional perfumers who could execute what we were trying to say. AURAWELL is the smell of a quiet mind we found out in the world, translated for the mind that needs it right here, right now.

CSL: And what do you hope happens when someone lights one of your incense sticks?

CZ: Nothing extraordinary. I hope they slow down. I hope their nervous system softens. I hope for a brief moment they return to themselves. Every incense stick, every candle, every spray is a fragment of that first forest walk. The moss. The quiet. The breath. Slow down. Light the incense. Breathe.

AURAWELL Palo Santo Sticks. Courtesy AURAWELL.