Curator Biography:
Serena Zena (she/her) is an emerging artist and curator based in Canada. Her multidisciplinary practice delves into the lived experiences and cultural narratives of the Asian diaspora in Canada. Central to her work are themes of identity, intergenerational relationships, and Asian futurism. Her practice blends storytelling with both traditional and emergent media ranging from textiles to extended-reality.
Artist Biographies + Statements:
Carmela Laganse is an artist and Associate Professor in the School of the Arts at McMaster University. Working in a variety of media, she often builds interactive work or portable, modular environments that playfully and critically integrate physical, emotional, ritualistic, and intellectual processes through an intersectional lens.
Find more of her work online at carmelalaganse.com.
Taien Ng-Chan is a writer, media artist, and a professor in Cinema & Media Arts at York University, and York Research Chair in Marginal & Emergent Media. She also serves as Chair of the Commission for Art and Cartography at the International Cartographic Association, and founded the artist-research collective Hamilton Perambulatory Unit (with artist Donna Akrey).
Find more of her work online at soyfishmedia.com.
Taien and Carmela are Co-Directors of the Sari-Sari Xchange Project, partnering with the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Tangled Art+Disability, and Centre[4]Arts to explore community-building through XR media creation.
“You Are What We Eat is an interactive augmented reality (AR) work that explores the idea of growing up in Western Canada within Asian families, resulting in their hybrid cultural experiences of their favourite activity – eating! This AR piece replaces the viewer’s head with one of the foods that the artists grew up with, whether a piece of dim sum, a hot dog, bok choy, or a carton of Beep! This playful work invites people to move their bodies and consider their own identities in relation to the types of food they eat.” – Carmela Laganse + Taien Ng-Chan
Arturo Jimenez is a multidisciplinary artist and community researcher with a BA in Political Science and is pursuing a diploma in electrical engineering. Jimenez focuses on the dynamics of individual identity and cultural heritage within the Western canon through digital media practices. His visual and audio work has been published in various independent record labels in Canada and the USA and was a recipient of the Hamilton Art Council’s 2022 BIPOC Hart music series. Currently involved in the Sari-Sari Xchange project, Jimenez continues to investigate new media techniques and their ability to foster cultural exchange.
“Drawing upon their experiences within the Asian diaspora, Jimenez weaves personal narratives with broader cultural motifs. Utilizing digital media, soundscapes, and interactive installation, Arturo crafts liminal worlds serving as a canvas to explore themes of digitized identity, memory, and belonging. Combining commercial digital techniques such as game design and music production, Arturo negotiates their inherent value when repurposed in a fine art context. Referencing cultural touchstones along the way those within and without the diaspora.” – Arturo Jimenez
Haoran Chang is an artist, media art researcher, and experimental game designer. He is pursuing a Phd. degree at York University. His practice and research focus on the liminality of virtuality, game studies, immersive media, health humanities in XR, media studies and narrative in neuroscience, and feminist Epistemology in STS. His Ph.D. dissertation examines VR game as a healing medium through the lens of Chinese Traditional Medicine philosophy to reconsider the relationship between body and environment with the mediation of technologies. He has exhibited works internationally, including Hunan Museum of Art in China, CICA museum in South Korea, Walter Otero Contemporary Art in Puerto Rico, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, and many more. He published papers in peer-reviewed journals like Refract and Virtual Creativity and international media art conference proceedings like ISEA, xCoAx, and CHI Play. He is also the founder of Mixed Reality collective Chameleon Gallery.
Find more of his work online at haoranchang.com.
“This interactive immersive video installation uses physical computing and real-time game engine rendering to reimagine the stories of a building with a history spanning over 100 years in Shanghai, China. All residents of this building were compelled to move out due to an ongoing gentrification policy. By using various forms of technology, including photogrammetry, 3D modeling, and 16mm film, along with various archival sources, a synthetic space is created based on the original building. Old and new, digital and analog, real and fictional, and virtual and physical elements interweave. In this installation, the stories of the building are concealed by AI-generated video based on the scratches and chemical contamination left on the hand-processed 16mm films. Audiences need to use their bodies to reveal the reimagined past. This project. questions the relationship between visible and invisible pasts, reimagines the ruins in different modalities, and reconsiders the role of technology in re-enactment.” – Haoran Chang
About The Sari-Sari Xchange Project Exhibition Series:
From September 6th, 2024, to February 22, 2025, the Sari-Sari Xchange is collaborating with Centre[4]Arts to host a series of four exhibitions, showcasing the evolving landscape of digital media. Through artwork, events, and interaction, each exhibition will feature artists from the Sari-Sari Xchange project who explore digital media through various experimental methods.
Their approaches encompass a range of technologies, from collaborative projects to interactive installations to digital remixes. This dynamic series will highlight how these artists push the boundaries of digital expression and engage with new technologies, offering a diverse and evolving perspective on the applications of digital media. Curated by Serena Zena, each presentation will explore themes of care and technology, representations of space and identity, relationships between body and the digital environment and intergenerational connection through digital media.
The Sari-Sari Xchange (SSX) is an SSHRC-funded community-building research and creation project driven by artists from the Asian diaspora that collaborates with a network of artists, cultural workers, and researchers, all coming together to foster more inclusive expression in futurist world-making through XR technologies. The SSX reflects the collaborative partnership between Tangled Art+Disability, Reel Asian Toronto International Film Festival, Centre[4]Arts, York University and McMaster University. We undertake exploration in emergent XR technologies and new storytelling techniques, address under-representation and issues of systemic racism, as well as the inaccessibility of these new technologies for both creators and users. Through activities like Tech Jams, supporting artistic production in XR in the residency program, and co-creating asset libraries, we work to have more inclusive representation and better accessibility to emergent technologies.
For more information about the Sari Sari Xchange, please visit sarisarixchange.mcmaster.ca and @sarisarixchange.
