This part-memoir, part-immersive archive invites audiences inside a digital excavation of the creator’s childhood home on an intimate journey that follows the evolving complexities of her relationship with her mother across three decades marked by regional conflicts and her eventual migration.
Nazar unfolds as experiential poetry within evil eye protection sessions, shared regularly over the years by mother and daughter and communicated primarily through touch.
“This has been an unmatched experience that far exceeded what I thought could be accomplished in relation to performance and rooted sensorial knowledge”
Participant Feedback
Developed in 2022 under the DYCP Grant, XR.BOTANICA is a series of workshops exploring participatory diary practices that draws on oral and personal histories through participatory immersive painting, botanical illustration, and digital design.
Hosted at:
– Portsmouth City of Sanctuary [2024]
– B3 Media [2024]
– Turf-projects, Croydon [2022]
– Croydon Refugee Council [2022]
Using poetry, soundscapes and virtual reality this exhibition immerses audiences into an Augmented Reality experience to raise awareness on migration, exile and dislocation.
Co-facilitated by artists Michelle Ezeuko and Lara Kobeissi, participants were invited to engage with sculpture and new technologies as conduits to offer asylum seekers moments of joy, laughter, respite and playfulness through conversations about football or music.
Lara Kobeissi (She/Her) – XR Artist and Creative Practitioner
Her interdisciplinary practice draws on multi-sensory performance, interactive storytelling, and game mechanics to explore new and existing methodologies of care and connection. She has participated in creating boundary-breaking projects at the intersection of emerging technologies and archival research including StoryFutures’ StoryTrails and Studio ANRK’s There Exists. Her work aims to innovate and redefine how audiences experience and engage with social histories
Thomas Buckley (He/They) – Creative Technologist, producer, researcher
Thomas specializes in the intersection of technology and art. An alumni fellow of The Royal Shakespeare Company and currently an associate artist at Portsmouth Guildhall, He leads innovative projects that explore the potential of XR and emergent technologies to deepen our sense of humanity. His work often combines sensory practice with new media, focusing on memory and sensory communication
Michelle Ezeuko (She/They) – Artist, Facilitator and Activist
Their practice explores our world through the lens of movement and migration with the aim of using art as a healing mechanism. Departing from their own lived experience, Michelle explores the intersections of race and class through hope and radical imagination as a means to visualise a better world. Their work and art invites people to come together and unlearn the borders and binaries that systematically divide and influence us
Maf’j Alvarez (She/Her) – Visual Artist, Creative Technologist and Mentor
She has showcased her artwork at National Gallery X, Venice Biennale film festival, The Lowry, Vorarlberg museum and Brighton Festival. She gives talks, mentors in labs, offers masterclasses, and runs workshops and hackjams to democratize artistic creation with immersive technology, particularly for women and underrepresented groups. Her latest collaborative VR title, Mammary Mountain, is touring at film festivals and institutions worldwide
Robert Morgan (He/Him) – Writer, Digital Dramaturge, researcher and Mentor
He writes and designs award-winning immersive experiences, and has helped create story worlds and XR installations for some of the world’s largest cultural institutions. Rob is founder and Creative Director of AR design studio Playlines, a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London, and a founding director of the XRrchiving conference on immersive technology for culture and heritage. He recently wrote the book ‘Storytelling for Spatial Computing and Mixed Reality: the Art of Augmenting Imagination’, Routledge
Pete Roobol (He/Him) – XR Developer and Creative Technologist
Former co-founder of Gamevial Games with seventeen years in game and interactive development, where he helped build custom content for Sony, Mitre and the Mirror, in addition to building and publishing games in-house that reached millions worldwide. He’s currently working on Butterflyverse, an XR project aimed at raising global awareness of butterflies and their natural environment
Sarmad Louis (He/Him) – Theater Practitioner and Sound Designer
He has written and directed short films including ‘One Shot’ and Le Parapluie Mauve. Since 1996, he participated in creating films and theatrical performances such as The Mountain and 1958 by Ghassan Salhab, working with Issam Bou Khaled on Carnivorous and Maaarch, with Rabih Mroué on Riding On A Cloud, and with Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué on Photoromance. He has also collaborated on Roger Assaf’s production of En Attendant Godot
