Main Gallery
DATABODIES
Haoran Chang
Arturo Jimenez
Carmela Laganse
Taien Ng-Chan
Curated by Serena Zena
Exhibition Dates: September 6th – October 11th, 2024
Opening Reception: September 6th, 7–9PM, 2024
Curatorial Statement/ Show Overview:
DataBodies plunges viewers into a multisensory world of digital installation art, where
experimental and narrative works redefine the boundaries between physical and virtual realms.
The exhibition harnesses an array of extended reality (XR) technologies, to blend, alter, or
mirror the physical world in a virtual space. From food face filters to motion-sensor video
installations to interactive kiosks, DataBodies invites playful experimentation and active
engagement, urging viewers to engage bodily with the art, positioning the audience as a crucial
participant that bridges the gap between the digital and the tangible.
The artists in DataBodies utilize domestic items, spaces, and imagery to cultivate a unique
sense of absence in their work. That absence prompts reflection on what might have been,
evoking nostalgia for things that may never have existed. It opens up space for the complexities
and nuances of diasporic Asian identity. Artists give a glimpse of the foods from their
childhoods; Chinese, Filipino, and Western foods swirl together, creating a concoction that can
only be understood in hindsight. Rooms full of mundane items, either left behind or there for our
use, tell fragmented stories of an individual’s life.
DataBodies highlights the tensions of digital and physical, of absence and presence, inviting the
audience to fill the void in between. The artists raise questions about the spaces in XR and the
bodies that inhabit them. Rather than offering answers, the works allow a novel view at the
everyday items that shape our understanding of ourselves and our world. These pieces create a
tapestry of stories that reveal the nuances of personal and communal identity and culture.
Artist Statements:
Carmela Laganse and Taien Ng-Chan: You Are What We Eat
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.
Arturo Jimenez: The Horror! The Horror!
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.
Haoran Chang: Seeing Through the Dark at Beijing East Road
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.
Artist Bios:
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.
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). Taien and Carmela are Co-Directors of the Sari-Sari Xchange Project, which partners with the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Tangled Art+Disability, and Centre[3] for Social+Artistic Practice to explore community-building through XR media creation.
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.
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.
Curator Bio:
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.
Haoran Chang. “Seeing Through the Dark at Beijing East Road” (2024), Multimedia Installation. Courtesy of the artist.
