const(i.e.)llations
Artist statement
“const(i.e.)llations” is a collaborative series of Augmented-Reality experiences, created by Zen Alladina and Riya Razdan.
Each installation explores a phonetic sound as a poem, representing the letters of a lost alphabet. Using illustration, animation, and music, the series evokes themes of cultural identity, displacement, and buried ancestral memories to seed an imagined future.
As seen in:
"This series is our way of mapping what's lost to us, or what never was— a history we collectively reimagine for ourselves, using the tools of the present day to share each piece of it with you."
—Zen
an augmented reality x poetry series
shhh
const(i.e.)llations: shhh
innergenerational
"Shhh" is a story told through layers of the unseen.
Hold the screen over each element, and Augmented Reality will reveal the ghost of an ancestor layered over Riya's charcoal drawing; the histories hidden under Zen's blackout poetry; a girl’s ancestral memories buried in the data of who she is in the present day.
What makes a person who they are? What data, genetic or machine, can't be captured? How does surveillance—a constant state of being seen—limit the way we understand ourselves; our histories?
const(i.e.)llations: x
nuit blanche toronto 2022
Hold your phone over Riya's artwork to see the city change, animated in Augmented Reality. Here, the familiar view is is covered in leaves, vines, and new life growing over the structures that exist today.
Turn to the poem by Zen painted over the window glass to interrogate the sound of 'x.' Exclusion. Excess. Exile. At the same time, place-making and relocation. Exploration. Expectation. Excitement.
What exists beneath the spaces where we position ourselves? What seeds are waiting to sprout anew?
works exhibited
x
about the artists
Riya Razdan
Zen Alladina
Riya Razdan is a UX/UI designer and illustrator who majored in Cognitive Science with a focus on human-computer interaction at the University of Toronto, earning a Bachelor of Science with Distinction in Honours.
Her work—both technical and creative—explores interconnectivity, technological accessibility, and escapism.
She was a finalist (500+ entries) for Adobe's International Creative Jam Competition in 2020 and received an Honorable Mention (2000+ entries) for the Annual Adobe Illustration Awards in 2019.
Zen Alladina is a writer, poet, and multidisciplinary creator. Her work draws from (yet dreams beyond) history, re-imagining the ancestral to contextualize the speculative.
She is the 2022 winner of Toronto Art Bar Poetry’s Discovery Night, with writing published or forthcoming in Room Magazine, Solarpunk Magazine, Asian American Writers' Workshop, and more.
A trained arts facilitator and tea sommelier, she has led tea-prompted creative workshops at Reset Centre, Toronto Metropolitan University, and online.
Riya is of Kashmiri descent. Zen is of Kutchi descent.
Both come from South Asian regions with their own
distinct cultures and languages—
but no alphabet.
work
with
us
based in
Toronto, canada
Seattle, USA
available for travel
email