OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers is excited to announce Hala Alsalman, Dee Dee Decay, Anika Iyer, Xinyi Tian, and Wang Zi as the recipients of the 2026 Critical Distance Centre for Curators Projections Program, Call for Artists Career Launchers! Their works will be curated by Jasmine Liaw and displayed at the CDCC for six-weeks in January/February 2026. An essay will be commissioned to accompany the work.
- Hala Alsalman is an interdisciplinary artist with a strong background in journalism. Her work investigates political power, history-making and gender relations through video, collage and ceramics. Being of Iraqi ancestry, she often draws inspiration from ancient Mesopotamian scholarship and aesthetics. She graduated from OCAD University with an SSHRC-funded interdisciplinary MFA in 2024 after 15 years of working in the media internationally. Grounded in the notion of historical cycles, her Master's thesis “The Rod and The Ring: Remember the Future and What It Could Bring” explores time through the language of dreams, clay and lost/found ancient Mesopotamian wisdom. The film component was selected by Pleasure Dome's New Toronto Works 2025 and the sculptures will be part of the group exhibition L'air est lourd at Art-Windsor Essex in 2026.
- With an emphasis on play, Dee Dee Decay likes to work with sculpture, performance, video, and the tender processing of materials. Their process is informed by walks with their grandmother, detangling nets by the river, and understanding more than human life forms. This past year they’ve developed an affinity to the white swiftlet’s nest and the unique nature of their construction. Ongoing research continues to explore imperial relationships in South Asia with questions of extraction and economic sovereignty. Dee is a queer Chinese-Viet settler studying at OCAD University for Sculpture and Indigenous Visual Culture.
- Anika Iyer is a multidisciplinary artist, exploring themes of ineffability and the limitations of language. She asks: how do we give voice to the unnamed? How does the world occur to a child before they have words for their experience? Through experimental film and video installation, Iyer engages with ephemera, using light as her primary medium. Working in analog film, she surrenders to slowness, the process demanding patience and ritual repetition. At this deliberate pace, time becomes her collaborator. She believes connections emerge through deep looking and listening, bringing viewers into her world of introspection and contemplation. To Iyer, presence and attention are prayer; a radical act in our attention grabbing world. Ironically, her moving images invite the viewer to return to stillness. Her work reveals threads of meaning in the spaces language cannot reach. Anika is a first generation South Asian settler in Toronto, currently studying Integrated Media at OCAD University.
- Xinyi Tian is a Chinese artist based in British Columbia, Canada. She graduated from the Experimental Animation program at OCAD University in May 2025 and is currently pursuing a Master of Digital Media at the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver. Specializing in 2D animation, character design, and illustration, Xinyi’s work explores emotion, movement, and abstract transformation through vibrant colors, multimedia techniques, and minimal yet striking visual language. She often combines digital animation, puppet stop-motion, and cut-paper techniques to bring imaginative worlds to life. Her thesis film, Stride & Shine!, has been selected for several animation festivals, including the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) in the Canadian Student Program. Xinyi’s artistic vision centers on collaborating with fellow creatives to explore themes of time, fantasy, and personal growth. Looking ahead, she aims to deepen her practice in narrative animation and interactive digital media, discovering new ways to blend storytelling with experimental form.
- Wang Zi 王紫 (b. Nanjing, China) is a Tkaronto/Toronto-based artist-educator whose practice spans print-based media, performance, sound, and socially engaged methodologies. Drawing from diasporic memory and mistranslation, her work reconstructs artifacts and scenes to examine overlooked compromises, unresolved perplexities, and acts of self-censorship. Wang has exhibited at the Ontario Legislative Assembly, Métis Space (HK), and Art Bank Canada, and led community programs with the ROM, CAMH, Richmond Hill Public Library, and Toronto Public Library.
Click here to learn more about our Career Launchers!
