Main Gallery
Impart
Amanda Ann-Min Wong, Sana Akram, Roda Medhat
Curated by Serena Zena
Exhibition Dates: January 17 - February 21, 2025
Opening Reception: January 17, 7pm-9pm
Curatorial Statement/ Show Overview:
Stories are the threads that weave us together, passed down through generations as vessels of knowledge, memory, and identity. In Impart, the artists explore the transformative ways we shape our communities, offering personal and unique perspectives on how our histories—both collective and individual—are interpreted, reshaped, and redefined. Through VR experiences and sculptures, the works examine the layers of meaning that emerge when cultures are inherited, lost, or altered, shaped by the presence and influence of each individual. The exhibition encourages viewers to reflect on the evolution of personal histories, revealing how they shift across time, space, and viewpoints, linking us through both the familiar and the unknown.
These works offer glimpses of what we leave behind, examining the impressions we make, what we pass on, and how we remain connected across generations. They ask us to consider how we impart our knowledge, our mark on the world, and the impact we have on others—prompting reflection on what we leave behind and how it shapes those who follow.
Artist Bios and Statements:
Amanda Ann-Min Wong
Amanda Ann-Min Wong (they/she) is a Toronto-based filmmaker. Originally from Southeast Asia, their films often explore memory, nostalgia, and community from a tenderly-crafted diasporic perspective.
Beginning their film career in documentary, Amanda has since branched into directing narrative fiction, music videos, unscripted television, and commercial content. Amanda’s experimental approach to storytelling has also led them to bridge their filmmaking practices with music, sound, and extended reality (XR). From 2018 to 2023, Amanda was also a key member of Toronto-based band, cutsleeve.
Dandelion Roots is Amanda’s first foray into virtual reality, exploring their Hakka heritage through their relationship with their grandmother.
Statement:
“Dandelion Roots invites viewers to explore the intricate layers of identity, memory, and belonging within the Hakka diaspora through the lens of my relationship with my grandmother. This VR experience weaves together immersive video, archival photos and videos, and audio recordings, creating a tapestry of movement and connection that speaks to the shared yet fragmented nature of diaspora life.
Technology and migration are deeply intertwined, both enabling and reflecting the ways families gather and scatter across borders. In this work, movement is both literal and symbolic—a representation of displacement and return, absence and presence. The VR medium amplifies this duality, immersing participants in spaces where the past converges with the present and familial connections transcend physical distances.
Through this project, I seek to unravel how diasporic identity is shaped not only by external migrations but also by the intimate, internal journeys of familial relationships. By engaging with memories of shared moments, the work serves as both a personal homage and an exploration of the broader narrative of Hakka resilience across borders. Ultimately, Dandelion Roots is an invitation to consider how technology and movement redefine the way we remember, connect, and belong.”
Sana Akram
Sana Akram is a Pakistani urbanist, media maker, a Fulbright alum and an XR creator based in Toronto, Canada. In 2020, she graduated with an MS in Design and Urban Ecologies from Parsons School of Design, The New School, where she diversified her research-practice by implementing an interdisciplinary design approach. Her award-winning interactive documentary, Little Pakistan – Future Histories, has showcased at several international festivals and her research has been published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Currently, she is pursuing a doctorate in Cinema and Media Studies at York University as a recipient of the prestigious Elia Scholars Program Award. Her research-creation interests include immersive storytelling and performance, oral tradition, worlding and worldbuilding, emergent media, cocreation, and civic engagement.
Statement:
Alam-e-Alam (The States of Worlding): Tilism Sazi is an interactive mixed reality experience comprising a series of veiled enchanted worlds conjured up through gestural performance and the creative breath. Situating all creation as agents invested with the spirit of magic defined by Ikhwan al-Safa as transformation directed by will and agency, combined with the position of talismans as efficacious technologies in Islamicate occult sciences allows a reading of talisman-performance assemblages—the elemental body in performance, the conjured image of the story-world through devices of wonder, and the spirit activated within the performative space—as assuming affective states that offer worlding potentialities in the realms of possibilities. The experience aims to serve as a transformative journey and foster a sense of wonder, connection, and enchantment.
The project draws on Akram’s ongoing doctoral research-creation focus on the historical Urdu language oral storytelling tradition and performative art of Tilismi Dastan from South Asia, which is uniquely coloured by Islamicate aesthetics along with Indic performance. This work is the first in a series of XR interactive experiences that reimagine the tilismi dastan with emergent media technologies and XR, and realize its transformative, generative, and creative potential for immersive storytelling, performance, and worldbuilding in the 21st century.
Roda Medhat
Roda Medhat is a Kurdish born artist, currently based in Toronto, Canada. Roda’s work is textile as sculpture, exploring the various ways traditional West Asian and Kurdish textiles can be translated onto other materials. The research behind the work heavily relies on themes of cultural preservation, archiving and imagined spaces. Using 3D scanning, textbooks and archives, Roda is piecing together a complete image of Kurdish textiles in history and as a modern craft.
Roda’s work has been recognized by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2023 Roda was selected as the 401 Richmond Career Launcher Prize recipient. In 2024 he also received the CIBC C2 Art Prize.
Statement:
Roda’s paternal grandmother’s marital dresser, a dowry chest received on her wedding day in 1955, is rendered in textile. The original was meticulously preserved utilising 3D scanning, producing an exact digital replica of the chest. This was transposed onto a rug and reassembled to mirror the original, a process which preserves the physicality of the dresser but also engages with the historical practice of dowry exchange. The work explores ideas of culture preservation, archiving and the transportation and translation of material culture and material history.
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.
