Vector Festival 2026 AR Residency: AR Artists in Residence
This year’s AR residency, When Does The Wired Body Come Home?, will feature AR and sculptural works exhibited along Queen Street West, curated by Christina Dovolis and Evangeline Y Brooks, and co-presented with SariSari Xchange.
Augmented (or extended) reality technologies allow us to see the digital within our IRL world, but often ignore the reality of our extended arm holding up the screen. We often bristle at the implications of treating our bodies like robots, or the trend towards biohacking ourselves into eternity. What if, conversely, we saw machines as if they were created in our own image? Can we imagine a world that invites the right-to-repair for human and machine bodies alike? Can we reframe the cyborg not as a metaphor, but as a reality of those living with synthetic interventions and computerized body parts (PICC lines, insulin pumps, prosthetic limbs), what Jillian Weise calls the “common cyborg”?
The multi-site exhibition will be along Queen St W from July 9 – August 8, with a launch party held at InterAccess alongside the flagship exhibition on July 11, 7–10PM.
ABOUT THE AR ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
kat estacio (they/them) Toronto
kat estacio is a soundmaker and artist-researcher, emerging from the tidal estuaries of Pasig River with taga-ilog/Tagalog ancestry, flowed towards the Great Lakes, and are now based in Tsí Tkaròn:to (Toronto).
Anchoring kulintang, Indigenous gong ensemble music tradition from Mindanao, kat bridges archipelagic narratives of percussive sound making and land-based tending.
kat is member of Filipinx-Canadian band, Pantayo, and is pursuing their MFA at OCAD U.
Najeeba Ahmed (they/them) Ottawa
Najeeba Ahmed is a new media artist and creative technologist whose practice is grounded in desi-futurism, exploring South Asian diasporic identity through embodiment and emerging technologies. Their work traces the porous boundaries between the personal and the computational, the spiritual and the synthetic, reimagining how culture, memory, and the body are shaped in hybrid worlds.
CTRL + (Adrienne Matheuszik (she/her) & Lingxiang Wu (he/him)) Toronto
CTRL+ (Adrienne Matheuszik and Lingxiang Wu) creates interactive installations that question the boundaries between physical and digital, critiquing digital spaces and the impact on identity and community. As a collective, we are interested in how online systems and culture shape identity, attention, and community.
danielle Mackenzie Long (they/them) Vancouver
danielle Mackenzie Long uses performance, new media and film to liberate gender non-conforming dance artists to create work that surpasses gendered bodies through visual experimentation and expanded audience access. Highlighting alternative forms of embodiment beyond traditional stages, they spatially resist preconceived perceptions of bodies and movement.
Pegah Peivandi (she/they) Toronto
Pegah Peivandi is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist with a primary focus on digital paintings, animation, multimedia installations, and enamoured with electrifying colors and textures that evoke a sense of surrealism, otherworldliness, and wide eyed wonder.
Serena Zena Mak Walk (she/her) Glasgow/Toronto
Hailing from Toronto, Serena Zena is an artist and curator currently based in Glasgow, Scotland. Often drawing on organic forms, her multidisciplinary practice delves into themes of eco- and Asian- futurity and the ways they intersect with technology.
Alessandra Saco-Vertiz (she/her) Valencia
Alessandra Saco-Vertiz is a Peruvian-Italian artist exploring the relationship between the body, technology, and hybridization. She investigates how the body is reshaped and mediated by technological and digital systems, working with polyurethane, plastics, and artificial light to explore fluidity, transformation, and the instability of bodily boundaries.
Diana Lynn VanderMeulen (she/her) Toronto
Diana Lynn VanderMeulen is an artist living in Toronto, Canada. Her practice is fluid between analogue and digital mediums with a focus on extended reality and cyclical material use as she develops expansive, multisensory environments. She has been an artist-in-residence at SAT Montreal and exhibited at Nuit Blanche, SAW Gallery, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, MUTEK, New Forms Festival, Toutoune Gallery, Video Pool, with Venus Fest at InterAccess.
Cyril Chen (they/them) Hamilton
Cyril Chen is a media artist and animator working with non-normative storytelling and extended reality game design. Their research-creation practice is focused on frameworks and theories around queer postcoloniality, south Chinese diaspora, and the affective potentials of daoism and land-based positionalities. Cyril is currently a research assistant at Sari-Sari Xchange.
Adrian Kyle (he/him) Hamilton
Adrian Kyle is an emerging media artist and filmmaker. His work explores themes of social stratification, upward mobility, and environmental sustainability. Having earned a degree in media arts, and now currently studying environmental sciences, Adrian aims to bridge the two worlds by creating work that explores issues related to environmental sustainability. He works in multiple mediums including live action film and 3D animation.
Sabrina Vachon (she/her) Hamilton
Sabrina Vachon is a multidisciplinary artist, currently studying for her BFA at McMaster University. She uses her movement, drawing, and emerging media practices to produce artwork that reflects her intersecting identities. Themes that she explores are cultural heritage, multiracial identity, and ritualistic traditions that make up her intersectionality.
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Christina Dovolis (she/her) Toronto
Christina Dovolis is an interdisciplinary filmmaker and geographer, often working with cutting-edge technologies to explore how our built environments shape community and identity. Hailing from the Midwest, Christina draws inspiration from themes of girlhood and gossip, religious mythologies, and the complexities of urban development. As an educator, Christina is committed to making new media programs more accessible to the public, particularly focusing on empowering women and marginalized groups.
Evangeline Y Brooks (she/her) Toronto
Evangeline is a postcyber artist interested in how we talk with computers and how they talk back to us. Her practice celebrates lost information, accidental noise, and the limitations of digital media. As an arts facilitator, she works to maintain sustainable, accessible, and DIY artist communities against cultures of immediacy.
ABOUT VECTOR FESTIVAL
Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, and workshops, Vector acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice.
The festival was founded in 2013 as the “Vector Game Art & New Media Festival” by an independent group of artists and curators: Skot Deeming, Clint Enns, kris kim, and Katie Micak, who were later joined by Diana Poulsen and Martin Zeilinger.