The abandoned grain silos for the Canada Malting Co. stand at the western end of Toronto’s waterfront — a relic of the city’s industrial past, they’re now designated heritage properties and anchor the public spaces of the new Bathurst Quay Common, right next to Billy Bishop airport.
They’re huge. Absolutely massive.
And, as it turns out, their expansive exterior concrete walls are also ideal places to project videos — including those produced by a collaborative research-creation project based partly at McMaster.
Artists with the Sari-Sari Xchange (SSX), which is co-directed by School of the Arts associate professor Carmela Laganse, were part of the Toronto Made, the World in a City Illuminated series of large-scale projections on the heritage silos, running on evenings in June and July as the city celebrated the 2026 World Cup.
Working in collaboration with InterAccess, an artist-run gallery, education facility and production studio dedicated to electronic media, SSX’s Enter the Dragonfruit had five screenings between June 14 and July 17.
“The City of Toronto is branding itself as a media arts city — in fact, it’s the first Canadian city to be designated a UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts,” explains Laganse.
“Using the existing and historic industrial architecture is a great way to make those arts accessible to a wide audience — and offers artists a unique way to showcase their work. We were really happy to be part of this program.”
SSX’s Enter the Dragonfruit is projected on to the side of the Canada Malting Co. malting towers in Toronto.
A five-year collaborative project that fosters new works in extended reality (XR) — which includes virtual, augmented and mixed realities — by artists from the Asian diaspora, SSX began 2022, and is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s (SSHRC) Race, Gender and Diversity Initiative.
The name Sari Sari comes from the Philippines: there, Sari Sari are small neighbourhood convenience stores run by women within their homes – a vital part of the local economy as well as a meeting place for people and ideas.
Their display on the malting silos is only SSX’s most recent project: They’ve also just wrapped up the Vector Festival, again working in collaboration with InterAccess. The event included performances and pieces for the opening night of the exhibitions, a collaborative large-scale projection called Looking In, and a multi-site exhibition on Queen Street featuring works by SSX/InterAccess artists in residence, including three of SSX’s research assistants.
Past and upcoming projects and exhibitions include continued partnerships with Centre [3] for Artistic + Social Practice in Hamilton ( Aug. 14 – Oct. 15, 2026) and for Reel Asian Toronto International Film Festival’s RaX programming.
They’ve presented at conferences in Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai.
And they’ve developed an online library of digital assets, called the Assetory, created with the Asian diaspora community in mind – images and other digital media that reflect the diversity of the Asian community’s everyday experiences.
Encouraging that kind of inclusive representation in XR was a primary goal of SSX — and so far, it, seems to be working.
“We’ve been able to increase the capacity of our partner organizations by co-facilitating work and activity that has more inclusive programming and representation of people with various identities,” Laganse explains.
“Just as an example, our Assetory emerged from environmental scans and responded to gaps in existing popular digital asset libraries.”
Collaboration, both within the community and across academic institutions, is key to SSX’s success, says Laganse, whose co-director, Taien Ng-Chan, is based at York University. SSX’s 10 to 12 research assistants are split between the two institutions and OCAD University.
They also work closely with McMaster alumnus and Canada Research Chair Immony Men and his RAs from the Asiatic Itineraries Research Centre (AIRC) at OCAD U.
“In addition to bringing Asian diasporic artists — with various intersecting identities — together with researchers, cultural workers and others, one of SSX’s major goals was to explore how we could genuinely collaborate and partner with community-based organizations, like artist-run centres, and cultural institutions that have specific mandates,” explains Laganse.
“This kind of equitable relationship-building takes time, and the SSHRC RGDI grant enables us to spend five years developing the kind of symbiotic relationship that supports each others’ goals and programming.
“It was an important risk for all of us to invest the time in the development of the project and also the reason for its success to date.”
Find out more about the Sari Sari Xchange, visit their website or check out their Instagram account.