Students, alumni and faculty from York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) have been bringing their work to public spaces and audiences across Toronto this summer, including Vector Festival 2026 and Toronto Made: The World in a City Illuminated.
Their involvement spans curatorial work, exhibitions, performances and film programming at Vector Festival, along with work presented through a post-secondary showcase and InterAccess-curated screenings at the Canada Malting Silos.
Sari-Sari Xchange, a research-creation project co-directed by AMPD Associate Professor Taien Ng-Chan, contributed to both initiatives through a new partnership with InterAccess.
AMPD at Vector Festival 2026
Presented by InterAccess, the 14th edition of Vector Festival explores relationships between human bodies and technology under the theme Who Cares For the Cyborg? The festival opened July 9, with several exhibitions continuing until August 8.
Film alumna Christina Dovolis (MFA ’23) is the partnership manager for the collaboration between Sari-Sari Xchange and InterAccess. As part of the festival, she co-curated with Evangeline Y. Brooks When Does the Wired Body Come Home?, an augmented reality residency that culminated in a multi-site exhibition of AR and sculptural work displayed in street-facing windows along Queen Street West.
Dovolis and Sari-Sari Xchange also curated Wired Together, a community showcase at Workman OFFSITE.
Reflecting on her experience working with AMPD faculty, Dovolis says it prepared her to coordinate projects of this scale.
“Through these collaborations, I learned how to coordinate creative projects, operate and organize large-scale projection installations, and support research-creation initiatives from concept to execution,” says Dovolis.
“That combination of hands-on technical experience, creative mentorship and interdisciplinary collaboration directly prepared me for my current role as an artist and partnership manager.”
Students contribute from idea to exhibition
Sari-Sari Xchange is a community-building venture using extended reality technologies, including virtual, augmented and mixed reality, to support work by artists from the Asian diaspora and address barriers to emerging technologies.
“We have all ranges of students involved in our team, from undergraduate to MFA and PhD students,” says Professor Ng-Chan. “All of the students on our team have a chance to make interactive media art collaboratively. They help with installation and engage with the public, so they get hands-on experience from the initial idea all the way to the exhibition.”
Work projected on the Canada Malting Silos
Toronto Made: The World in a City Illuminated is a City of Toronto projection series presented on the Canada Malting Silos during the FIFA World Cup celebrations and Video Game Month.
AMPD students and alumni participated through two separate programs: Illuminating Higher Education, a showcase featuring Toronto post-secondary institutions, and Dovolis also co-curated a separate InterAccess program of 26 video works.
It included her own Sidewalk 3000, Seeing Through the Dark by current PhD candidate Haoran Chang, Blastula Division by alumnus Dan Tapper (MFA ’20) and Sari-Sari Xchange’s Enter the Dragon Fruit.
Learn more through InterAccess and the City of Toronto.
Cover photo: Abysaal Symbiosis by Jingwen Zhang
