Opening Night Reception: All are welcome to join our opening reception on January 29 from 5 – 7pm.
Exhibition Dates: January 29 – February 6 during regular hours of 12pm – 6pm.
Location: POD Student Gallery (POD 056-A) | 350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON M5B 0A1
Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday, 12 PM – 6 PM
Selfhood is everchanging, luminous and forever shifting.
Iridescent Autonomy explores the human experience through tactile art pieces that invite curiosity and ask for a pause within the present moment. Through childlike wonder, interconnection, and critique of contemporary systems, the idea of self begins to reveal itself. Autonomy, often appearing translucent in daily life and blurred beyond what meets the eye, seeks to be brought into focus within this exhibition. Visitors reclaim what is theirs through artworks mediated by sound, light, color, and wearable work.
We invite visitors to take a step back and encounter their own human experience as iridescence: never fixed, shimmering and refracting uniquely through each individual.
Curatorial Essay
Iridescent Autonomy: Selfhood is luminous and forever shifting.
Iridescent Autonomy is a tangible new media art exhibition which approaches the nuances of autonomy across the past, present and future. The exhibited works employ light, sound, colour and tactile materiality to create a multisensory environment.
Iridescence describes an optical condition where a surface changes colour depending on the viewing angle of the object. The colours displayed are often rainbow-esque, appearing in nature through beetle wings, peacock feathers, and through childhood in the bubbles formed by wands. Iridescence comes from the Greek word for rainbow, iris. This is also the name for the coloured part of the eye surrounding the pupils, where muscles adjust to changes in lighting to maintain clear vision. Autonomy refers to agency and control over actions. The use of the word, Iridescent, describes how the autonomy of an individual is actually influenced by multiple external factors, making it a relational, shifting experience rather than something solely enforced. This does not negate human autonomy, rather it acknowledges that while decisions are made through free will, they are continuously shaped by context, environment and interaction. We are surrounded by Iridescence, as we manifest it through the complexity and changes of life, as well as the natural environment. This exhibition explores different human experiences and encourages users to practice mindfulness through interactive works. Do we have agency? How can we live in the present moment? What are the ways we can connect with our inner child?
Iridescent Autonomy explores these questions through multiple lenses. As artists challenge contemporary systems, reawaken childhood memories, create moments of play and encourage disconnection from technology, users of this exhibition are prompted to reconnect with themselves.
Pathological Entanglement by Angelo Govas is an analogical, autoethnographic piece that evokes tension and presents constriction. The work features a white, sculptural hand that floats in suspension, bounded by wires of a complex web of medical diagnostics. This piece reflects Iridescent autonomy through the lens of bodily autonomy, as it is deeply questioned through multiple anecdotal experiences discussed by Govas. The piece critiques how the diagnostic framework within the medical system can entangle individuals within many socioeconomic stigmas. Through each movement, the hand interferes with the web, symbolizing how individuals navigating the medical systems are constrained by past diagnostics that continue to shape and even limit the care they receive.
To experience interconnectedness, Ranjit Khela presents an opportunity for visitors to collaborate and bond through a shared soundscape in A SHARED NETWORK. By the convergence of digital and physical realms, Khela invites audiences to experience technology as a tool for physical connectedness, using sound as an interactive medium. A sense of agency emerges in the moment as visitors play individual notes that come together to create harmony. As such, users are able to connect with one another in the physical world while using technology, understood as a network of nature, bodies and computers.
The slinky, a childhood toy originally designed for a single purpose, is redeveloped into a modular form of interactive experience within Ashley Hannah, Ultra-Slinky Sonic Playground. Evoking nostalgia and play, its tactile material invites curiosity through multiple modes of engagement. Vibrant colours and light stimulate joy, complemented by upbeat music and multimedia elements which animate the work. Hannah invites users to reconnect with the iconic slinky, stepping away from the present into moments of playful exploration. By transforming a familiar object, the work aligns with Iridescent Autonomy, revealing how agency can shift through play and interaction.
Abby Foo’s Talking to Flowers, invites users onto a path toward childhood by evoking a playful, nostalgic experience. Through a flower constructed with coloured tissue paper and sound, the work bridges the gap between art and technology by creating a piece that brings imaginary space into reality. Memory is iridescent in nature, continually fading as childhood becomes a distant recollection through aging. This artist, however, invites users to step back and revisit play in the present, reclaiming autonomy over their own existence.
Mekhi Haye’s Huebrewer, is a magical yet educational journey on colour theory through a tactile, playful experience. As society becomes more digital, feelings can become diluted and lost in this process. Huebrewer allows a reconnection to human emotion through play. Users are encouraged to mix their own potion using primary colours of red, yellow and blue. To do so, users adjust a potentiometer which controls the strength of each colour and watch as they blend in real time to create a potion. By using physical buttons, each colour is activated through NeoPixel LEDs that seem alive as they gently pulse within this process. Sound is used to reinforce a sense of play as it responds to the user, as if the mixture is active. Creating potions based on this gives users agency and shifts between each person, creating an iridescent experience.
Rowan O’Regan’s freedom to fly, is a wearable, tactile artwork reminiscent of fairy wings. Reaching back to her childhood as a young girl who longed to own a pair, the artist brings this dream to life through a kinetic piece constructed with code and circuitry, merging fashion and technology. Its fantastical and whimsical form translates a childhood memory for the present moment, reconnecting adulthood with the dreams of childhood, where autonomy is reclaimed through imagination and movement.
Iridescent Autonomy on view at the POD Student Gallery (POD 056-A) from January 29th to February 5th, 2026, at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Zauha Rehman Qamar
Programming Curator, NEXT