Most recently, in 2024, she was the managing editor of a new publication from Para Site, Sternberg, & MIT Press entitled What to Let Go? Edited by Cosmin Costinaş and Inti Guerrero, this collection of new contributions—by an international roster of thinkers, authors, historians, curators, artists, and poets contributes to discussions about what counts as heritage now, who gets to do the counting, and broader related issues around the subject of cultural sovereignty.

From 2022 to 2024, Shea was Director of Fogo Island Arts, a residency-based contemporary art program in Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), where she oversaw exhibitions, public programs, and projects focusing on contemporary artistic practices and exploring its relationship to foodways, ecology, and economy. Notable projects include Liam Gillick’s A Variability Quantifier (The Fogo Island Red Weather Station), part of the World Weather Network and acquired by the National Gallery of Canada, and the major group exhibition Meltwater, which explored the island’s relationship to ‘Iceberg Alley.’ She curated solo exhibitions by Nelson White and Nadia Belerique and introduced new residency programs, including Labrador Current Foodways and the Fog & Mist residency for Hong Kong-based artists, created in collaboration with Para Site and MOCA Toronto.

From 2017 to 2021, Shea was the Deputy Director at Para Site, Hong Kong’s leading contemporary art center and one of Asia’s oldest and most active independent art institutions. She co-curated (with Cosmin Costinaş) the major group exhibition An Opera for Animals, which toured to Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai in the summer of 2019. She helped devise new initiatives, including PS Paid Studio Visits, providing free online studio visits with a younger generation of Hong Kong artists, and the NoExit Grant, offering unrestricted financial support to 25 Hong Kong artists during the pandemic.

From 2008 to 2016, Shea was Curatorial Director at Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood, England, where she curated A Beautiful Disorder (with Dr Wenny Teo and Ella Liao Wei). This exhibition was the UK’s first major showcase of outdoor sculpture by contemporary artists from Greater China featuring new commissions from artists including Cui Jie, Li Jinghu, Wang Wei, Xu Zhen (MadeIn Company), Zhang Ruyi and Zheng Bo.

From 2010 to 2015, Shea was on the selection and steering committees of Bold Tendencies, an ambitious annual programme in South London that brings together a new generation of voices with acclaimed international artists in visual art, music, dance, literature, spoken word and opera. Bold has transformed Peckham’s disused Multi-Storey Car Park into an iconic, much-loved place of culture and assembly. 

She curated the 2015 inaugural Thun Ceramic Residency in Bolzano, Italy, and was an Associate Curator for the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial in 2014 entitled We Have Never Participated. The biennial included ambitious presentations by artists including Cao Fei, Cheng Ran, Geng Jianyi, Gran Fury, Meiro Koizumi, Lai Chih-Sheng, Ahmet Öğüt, Adrian Piper, Héctor Zamora, and many others.

Shea began her career at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, where she became an Intern Coordinator, running the prestigious Guggenheim Internship Programme from 2006 to 2008.