Congratulations to alum Harry Zhao (MFA, Digital Futures) who is the 2026 winner of the InterAccess Media Arts Prize, awarded annually to a graduating student whose work exhibits excellence and innovation in new media practice.
“Winning the Media Arts Prize still feels a little unreal to me, and I’m incredibly grateful to InterAccess for this opportunity to develop and share my practice,” says Zhao, who is a Toronto-based artist and researcher working across robotics, installation and digital media.
His practice explores the alternate relationship between the human and the artificial. He makes robots that do weird things: some crawl in search of edges, some seek darkness, and others tend to their feelings by staying still.
He calls them Iterative Creatures, speculative beings embodied in machines, exploring the physical world and inevitably encountering humans along the way.
Zhao's project AWORM explores artificial life and the role robots can play in shaping their own development. By concealing their inner workings, he invites us to interpret their behaviours and encounter them as beings with concerns of their own.
His labour of building, maintaining, repairing, and caring for these creatures challenges the expectation that robots exist to serve humans, opening possibilities for relationships grounded in care, curiosity, and intimacy.
Zhao holds an MFA in Digital Futures from OCAD University and a BFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Prize winners receive a solo exhibition opportunity, a complimentary one-year studio membership and professional development and mentorship. Zhao’s solo exhibition will open in January 2027.
Two OCAD U grads were finalists for the prize: Thea Lu (MDes., Digital Futures) and Melanie Garcia (BFA, Experimental Animation) who will receive a complimentary one-year studio membership to InterAccess and an opportunity for a public artist program.
