PXR2026
2026 IBPOC Fellows

Michael Manuwa, known professionally as Hero One, is a multidisciplinary artist and creative technologist working across performance, music, visual storytelling, and immersive media. His practice centers on building emotionally driven experiences that merge sound, narrative, and audience participation.

Alongside his artistic work, he has professional experience in digital marketing, A&R, and creative operations, supporting independent artists and labels with release strategy, audience development, and platform growth across Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. This dual background shapes his approach to art as both cultural expression and experiential design.

He is the founder of Eternal Web3 Art Chronicles Creation, a creative initiative exploring music-driven virtual spaces, digital exhibitions, and community-based storytelling using emerging technologies. Through XR, Michael is focused on expanding performance into interactive environments where audiences actively shape the narrative, creating immersive, culturally grounded experiences that extend beyond traditional stages.

Amanda Tkaczyk is curious about the future of care and passionate about the power of authentic co-creation. She combines expressive abstract paintings, technology interactives, accessible poetry, and experimental performance art to explore themes of loss, belonging, grief, and spontaneity. Her practice is often informed by her academic and professional background in psychology and applied artificial intelligence (Master’s of AI, Queen’s University, 2021).

Since launching her professional practice in Summer 2024, Amanda’s exhibitions and performances include: Third Shift Contemporary Arts Festival (Saint John, NB), Hillside Festival (Guelph, ON), Wheat City Nuit Blanche (Brandon, MB), and Art Gallery of Burlington. In Summer 2026, Amanda will premiere two new works for the Ottawa Fringe Festival and Hamilton Fringe Festival. In Fall 2026, her first solo exhibition will be presented by Cambridge Art Galleries.

Read more and connect with Amanda at www.whatsoever.ca

Asad Aftab is an internationally exhibiting, award-winning media artist, filmmaker and designer based in Vancouver, whose work explores the intersection of spatial storytelling and emerging technologies. Asad brings a systems-level understanding of form, space, and user experience to his creative practice.

Xunan Wang was born in Qiqihar, China, educated in Hong Kong, and is currently based in Kingston, Ontario. Though often described as an artist or filmmaker, he is hesitant to claim these titles; he prefers to think of himself as a futurologist. His work spans documentary and cinematic virtual reality, and more broadly engages with questions of reality and immersion. His practice explores the shifting boundaries between fiction and reality, challenging conventional narrative structures while interrogating the limits of the screen. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University, where his research examines spectral experience in virtual reality through the lenses of hauntology and futurology.

Jeannine Charles is an immersive experience designer working at the intersection of technology, storytelling, and human emotion.

With a background in industrial design and over a decade of experience in photography and visual media, she brings a refined eye for detail, composition, and narrative into the world of Extended Reality (AR/VR/XR).

Driven by curiosity and a fascination with human-computer interaction, Jeannine made a bold mid-career transition into immersive production, where she designs interactive environments, simulations, and digital experiences that invite audiences to step beyond the physical world.

Her work blends technical execution with aesthetic sensitivity, creating experiences that are both innovative and emotionally resonant.

Jeannine is committed to shaping the future of immersive design—crafting environments where imagination, beauty, and technology converge to expand how we experience reality.

Moriah Chutong Yu (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher working at the intersection of XR, immersive storytelling, and curatorial practice. With a background in Film and Media, and Education from Queen’s University, her practice integrates virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) to explore how embodied interaction reshapes narrative, identity, and spatial experience. Drawing on media theory and installation art, she develops multi-sensory environments that investigate presence and participation.

Yu’s recent projects examine how immersive technologies can reconfigure traditional storytelling structures and expand curatorial frameworks beyond the screen. She is particularly interested in the ethical and perceptual dimensions of virtual embodiment, as well as the potential of XR as both an artistic and pedagogical medium.

Kelly Chia is a Malaysian-Chinese Hakka writer, a library worker, and a lover for sentimentality. Her articles can be read on The Peak, SFU’s student publication. Kelly writes most about homes and how they shape us, and she is hoping to learn how to create accessible worlds through different mediums like VR/XR. Since graduating, she has created Memories of Home, a personal zine about Malaysia and Singapore.

Hi! I’m Chris-Liz, I’m a queer, Afro-Indigenous designer, writer, and director with an interest in our ever-evolving relationship to technology, control, and play. I like to play with pretty colours, reactive design and the audience’s perception of their place in the world.