Zen & Riya

Zen Alladina

Zen Alladina [she/her] is a writer, poet, and tea sommelier living on the Treaty 13 land known as t’karonto|Toronto, Canada. She is the 2022 winner of Toronto Art Bar Poetry’s Discovery Night, with writing appearing (or forthcoming) in projects from Solarpunk Magazine, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, UKAI Projects, Soap Box Press, and more. She writes stories that draw from (yet dream beyond) history, re-imagining the ancestral to contextualize the speculative. 

Riya Razdan

Riya Razdan [she/her] is a UX/UI designer and illustrator who majored in Cognitive Science with a focus on human-computer interaction at the University of Toronto, earning a Bachelor of Science with Distinction in Honours. Her work —both technical and creative—explores interconnectivity, technological accessibility, and escapism. She was a finalist (500+ entries) for Adobe's International Creative Jam Competition in 2020 and received an Honorable Mention (2000 entries) for the Annual Adobe Illustration Awards in 2019.

Zen is of Kutchi descent. Riya is of Kashmiri descent. Both come from South Asian regions with their own distinct cultures and languages—but no alphabet.

Riya Razdan is a designer of Kashmiri descent. Zen Alladina is a poet of Kutchi descent. Both come from South Asian regions with their own distinct cultures and languages—but no alphabet.

Project Description

const(i.e.)llations

const(i.e.)llations is a series of immersive XR poems, experienced with a smartphone or headset. Each poem explores a phonetic sound, representing a letter of a lost alphabet. Combining poetry and visual objects in the 360 space, the series evokes themes of cultural identity, displacement, and buried ancestral memories to seed an imagined future.