about.

Nocturnal Bloom is a modular, three-sided holographic projection-mapping environment built around an interactive selfie camera box that lets guests see themselves inside a living, breathing digital ecosystem. Commissioned for the Toronto Arts Foundation’s annual gala—a major “who’s who” gathering of artists, patrons, and cultural leaders—the installation turns the act of looking into a moment of transformation.

The piece explores the hidden world of things that thrive after dark: microorganisms, jellyfish pulses, plant cells dividing under moonlight, quiet blooms that only unfold when the city sleeps. These nocturnal forms drift across the surfaces of the structure, responding subtly to presence and movement. As visitors step into the box, the live camera blends them into the environment, collapsing the boundary between observer and organism.

Designed as a fully modular system, Nocturnal Bloom adapts to different spaces, audiences, and contexts—much like the resilient species that populate the night. Its architecture can expand, contract, or reconfigure, allowing the work to evolve each time it’s presented. This flexibility mirrors the very subject matter it draws from: growth in unlikely conditions, emergence from the shadows, and the idea that life continues quietly and powerfully when no one is watching.

director’s statement.

“At its core, Nocturnal Bloom is about perception—how we see ourselves, how we inhabit space, and how subtle shifts in environment change the stories we tell about who we are. The selfie box becomes a lens that reframes self-portraiture: not as vanity, but as a point of entry into a shared ecosystem where human presence affects the visual world around it.

I’m fascinated by the way many forms of life grow only at night. Away from the spotlight, growth becomes something private, instinctive, and patient. This installation takes that idea and applies it to us. In the dark, surrounded by drifting micro-organisms and luminous nocturnal blooms, people let go of performance. They play. They explore. They connect.

The modular nature of the piece is intentional. I want the structure to behave the way the natural world does—shapeshifting, adapting, finding new ways to exist depending on the space, the season, or the community around it. Every time Nocturnal Bloom is reinstalled, it becomes something slightly different, just like the life that inspired it.

This work invites people to step inside a world where growth happens off to the side, between breaths, after hours—when we’re most ourselves.”