Interconnected Perspectives
STARTING MAY OF 2026 RUNS TILL SEPTEMBER 2026
A collection of student works from the "Professional Practice" course, January - April 2026, OCAD University, Taught by Julius Poncelet Manapul, TAs: Tavleen Kaur Lall, Damla Yarar, Youngman Choi
10 ARTISTS: Aysenur (Ash) Ozkan, Ari Cleary, Yoonha Lee Jang, Aleen Nakhnikian, Minju Park, Sierra Pountney, Qihang Huang, Giulio Mazzotta, Bisma Khalid, Sai Janakiraman
Interconnected Perspectives is a multimedia collection of works showcasing a diverse cast of artists and their interpretations of connection. The ten artists featured are a part of OCAD’s experimental animation program, and through their unique creative practice, each demonstrates a relationship they experience, not limited to human connection. Other examples featured include connections to nature, family, transness, queerness, death, and more. By bringing together each of their individual experiences, struggles, and ruminations, this exhibition hopes to question what other connections exist within their own personal narratives.
Special thanks to the guidance Phoebe Wang, Chiedza Pasipanodya, Amanda Foulds, Peter Kingstone, Neda Omidvar, Nicholas Dass, the team at Onsite Gallery Susan Jama, and Kesa Smith. Also, to the OCAD U community.
Aysenur (Ash) Ozkan
Title: Backlash (2025)
Medium: 2D Hand-Drawn Digital Animation
Duration: 00:01:30
Backlash explores how we try to escape from our own emotions and what happens when that fails. The film takes place on a calm hill by the water. A girl named Duru stands with her bike when she suddenly begins to break apart, crying and screaming. As her emotions get stronger, the clouds change color and the environment reacts to her. Realizing the world is changing, she tries to escape but crashes into a portal. Duru notices a silhouette inside that reaches out a hand, inviting her in. She becomes hypnotized and walks toward the portal. Then, something shifts. A version of Duru emerges with an unnatural smile. This doppelgänger destroys her and takes her place, riding away on her bike and leaving nothing behind. I created this film to show how far we go to hide what we feel, even when it starts destroying us. In a world where we are expected to keep moving no matter what, we learn to hide behind fake smiles. Sometimes it feels like no one really cares, so we silence ourselves instead. When emotions are ignored for too long, they either backlash at us or completely take over. The film is intentionally open-ended. I wanted to create a space where people project their own experiences onto it. Every interpretation I’ve heard is different, and that’s what makes it interesting to me.
Ari Cleary
Title: Moulding Form (2026)
Medium: Digital Animation, Animated on Procreate and Procreate Dreams
Duration: 00:00:56
My Animation called “Moulding Form” represents my relationship to my body and self presentation. My idea of the “body” extends beyond just the physical meaning of my genetic form. To me, clothes, makeup, hair, are all examples of presentation that can be contorted as an extension of one's body, and I think are especially important to transgender individuals who might not always be able to change their physical bodies to represent their true selves. Being a trans nonbinary individual, I explore through the metaphor of caterpillars and butterflies, how top surgery allowed me to become more comfortable with expressing myself. I am very interested in investigating the idea of how taking something away or “destroying” it, can act to instead extend it, making it bigger and more tangible than it ever was.
Yoonha Lee Jang
Title: The Kiss (2023)
Medium: Acrylic Paint on Canvas
Size: 28" × 22"
“The Kiss” is a queered response to Gustav Klimt’s 1908-1909 painting of the same title, where instead of an image informed by a traditional, male-dominant assignment of roles in a relationship, it is a joyous celebration of love and reciprocal affection between two women. The hierarchy of figures is replaced with a more balanced composition, and warm colours and organic forms coalesce into a painting of a joyous, lesbian union. This work is a meditation on joy and love in feminine spaces, and is an expansion of my interest in queer identities and finding space to exist within the bounds of traditional expectations of gender and sexuality.
Aleen Nakhnikian
Title: Kindled Slow Burn (2024)
Medium: GIF Animation, Digital, Procreate
Duration: 00:00:01
Kindled Slow Burn portrays aspects of a relationship that embody the hope of kindling a relationship with others. Examining the mind and how it operates in the sense of longing or connection with others, whether positive or negative, is a fascinating concept. I wish to portray these ideas in the style of an animation that never ends, a looping gif that will continue to “burn” through time as long as it's displayed for others to see. Having this be created in a digital world allows a sense of disconnect with the viewer, but also creates a sense of longing deep inside. Having been someone who struggles to create such deep relationships with others, it is something I even reach out to and try to hold on to for as long as I can. Why do we as people crave such concepts? Why do some turn away from it? What are the meanings of such feelings?
Minju Park
Title: Eternity (2023)
Medium: Paper, Gouache, Laminating sheet
Duration: 00:00:54
Eternity (2023) is an hand-painted animation with six gouache paintings on paper. I created it for myself and my five friends who supported me during a time of emotional instability. The work reflects my immature dream of eternity, born from the fear of forgetting someone who once meant everything to me. I painted six living things—a flower, goldfish, clam, butterfly, starfish, and conch shell—as metaphors from nature, representing environments like land, sky, ocean, shore, and freshwater. Through colour, I expressed how my friends and I live separate lives yet relying on each other. The animation shows their growth, and in the final sequence, I laminated them at their most beautiful moment, trying to capture a sense of permanence. I don't like the phrase ‘nothing lasts forever.’ It may be true, but the fact that I wished for eternity in that moment is an eternal truth. Although nothing lasts forever, the desire for eternity itself is real and meaningful. I preserved such feeling through this piece.
Sierra Pountney
Title: Tranquil Garden (2023)
Medium: Various craft materials
Size: N/A
My work Tranquil Garden reflects on the relationship that we as humans have with nature. It invokes a feeling of tranquility as if you have been transported to a lovely garden. Where the stresses of everyday life can just melt away. It helps people come to the realization that they do not take enough time of their day to stop and appreciate the little things in life and to truly ponder on their own relationship with nature. With a variety of arts and craft materials it has a textured effect that you can reach out and touch with a 3D environment to take in.
Qihang Huang
Title: Connection (2026)
Medium: 2D Digital Animation
Duration: 00:00:04
This short animation explores the connection between humans and animals through gradual transformation. The hand slowly changes into a wing, showing a moment where the body exists between two states. The work reflects the idea that humans and animals are closely connected, and that humans are also a part of the animal world. By blending human and bird forms together, the boundary between them becomes less clear. Rather than presenting them as separate, the animation suggests a shared existence. The transformation is not about becoming something else, but about revealing a connection that already exists. The loop emphasizes that this connection is ongoing and never fully complete.
Giulio Mazzotta
Title: The Hunted (2024-2025)
Medium: 2D Digital animation, Harmony, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Audition
Duration: 00:02:58
Throughout most of my projects, I explore themes of death and nature. This almost 3-minute short film, The Hunted, is no different. For me, this short film represents humanity's destructive nature. Throughout the course of this film, we learn more and more about what is going on in this facility, the main Mother and Child get taken into. By the end, the audience learns it was humans the entire time. It takes shape as a commentary on our destructive and colonial nature. I did all my animation for this project within Toon Boom Harmony. All of the animation was hand-drawn frame by frame. I used After Effects to composite the animations with the backgrounds I made in Photoshop. Finally, I completed all sound editing and final edits in Audition and Premiere Pro. The goal of this work is to represent the themes through a narrative format. Showing a possible future in which humans have begun interplanetary travel and are using up the resources of other planets. This short film encapsulates my beliefs about how the human race will end up if we continue down this capitalistic, resource-hungry path.
Bisma Khalid
Title: The Morning of Freedom (2025)
Medium: 2D Digital animation created on After Effects and Krita
Duration: 00:00:42
The Morning of Freedom draws its title from Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s 1947 poem responding to the Partition of India, reflecting on a freedom stained by violence. Through experimental 2D digital animation, I explore how colonization shapes land, memory, and identity, while developing the visual language of resistance and healing. The animation centers on a single abstract ball that shifts in color and form, moving across the animation and transforming to evoke Partition. Colonial-era structures like Frere Hall and Karachi Clock Tower appear as enduring reminders of the past, while color transitions from grey stillness to vibrant oranges, purples, and then a rainbow crystal ball to represent the journey of colonized communities toward healing. Ambient humming accompanies the imagery, creating an intimate but unsettling atmosphere, reflecting the South Asian experience where independence can coexist with a lingering unease. As a South Asian immigrant and descendant of Partition migrants, I situate monuments from my homeland within abstraction to honor cultural aesthetics while acknowledging colonial histories. The work asserts that healing, resilience, and creative expression are active forms of resistance, and imagining futures where communities reclaim agency.
Sai Janakiraman
Title: One Hundred (2025)
Medium: Stop Motion Animation - Brewed Sencha Tea Leaves, Matcha, Plastic Wrap, Brewed Tea, Paper Napkin, LightBox.
Duration: 00:01:18
One Hundred is an exploration of materiality using stop motion and video editing to bring out the natural occurring patterns in Japanese sencha tea leaves. This animation aims to show that every leaf that we use has its own distinct qualities. I chose to highlight One hundred individual leaves that make up a cup of tea, to specify and explore the high rates of consumption in society. To display this work, I would fill a bowl with tea leaves, as it improves the connection between the spectator and the animation. This piece is a critique of overconsumption in society and reusing footage, using dichotomy of more and less to influence. I want to explore societal practices in my work as animation is a forthright medium that is accessible for multigenerational creativity.
Credits:
Aysenur (Ash) Ozkan, Ari Cleary, Yoonha Lee Jang, Aleen Nakhnikian, Minju Park, Sierra Pountney, Qihang Huang, Giulio Mazzotta, Bisma Khalid, Sai Janakiraman