Xuan Ye’s animation, The Exphonia, transforms the ICNALE corpus, hundreds of L2 (second language) English essays on part‑time jobs and smoking bans, into a living monument to exophony, the act of speaking and writing in a non‑native tongue.

Each essay becomes a root system that germinates, forks, and twists in real time. Grammatical deviations and non‑native word combinations physically warp the tendrils and diverge the rhizomes.

The metaphor of the rhizome is reimagined as a cross‑cultural ecology in which linguistic markedness is not a flaw, but the very soil from which an astonishing forest emerges.

Developed through a residency at the JCCC over the summer of 2026, Exophonia acts as a companion piece to the Many Voices: Japanese Languages in Canada exhibit in the Moriyama Nikkei Heritage Centre, extending its insights on linguistic non-standardness and non-nativeness to our hyper-globalized reality.

Artist bio:

Xuan Ye makes noise as a compass, navigating the intersections of art, music, and technology. Their practice unfolds across software, sound, image, installation, performance, publication, and teaching, tracing the diffraction and resonance across technological, biological, and ecological systems. Their work has been exhibited at the Centre for Culture and Technology (2025), Kamias Triennial (2024), MOCA Toronto (2022), UCCA Shanghai (2022), Venice Architecture Biennale (2021), MUTEK Montreal (2021), InterAccess (2020), and Goethe-Institut Beijing (2018), among others. They have been recognized with residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2026), University of Toronto (2025/26), ZHdK (2024), and Pro Helvetia (2023), and have received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Partners in Art, and SSHRC. Their work has been featured in Peripheral Review, Canadian Art, ArtAsiaPacific, KUNSTFORUM International, and Musicworks. Originally from China, Ye lives in Toronto/Tkaronto and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo.