Break My Body, Hold My Bones
By
Isabella Dagnino

A THESIS SUPPORT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF FINE ARTS

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2023

BFA, University of the Fraser Valley, 2021

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Table of Contents
Dedication// 3
Acknowledgments // 4
Abstract// 5
List of Figures// 6
Introduction// 7
My Roots, My Lineage// 11
Transforming Light// 15
Coming of Age Framework// 19
Portals and Plywood// 26
The Point Where Everything Meets// 29
Re lection// 33
Bibliography// 35

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This is dedicated to my mother, my ancestors and kin, both blood and chosen.

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Acknowledgments
This work has partially taken place on the unceded ancestral and traditional
̓ m (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish),
territories of xʷməθkʷəyə
and səltilw̓ ətaʔɬ(Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. I am grateful for the opportunity to live
where I do and carry the weight and responsibility in what it means to actively work
towards decolonization in the everyday.
I would also like to acknowledge that this research took place on ancestral and
unceded shared traditional territory of Chawathil First Nation of the Tiyt Tribe. The
territory of the Tiyt Tribes of the St :l Nation extends along the boundaries down
both sides of the Fraser River from Yale to Seabird Island. This is where I have
grown up and been fortunate to ind community and kinship.
I am grateful for the guidance and support of my supervisor Lindsay McIntyre.
It was through her encouragement, patience, kindness and kinship I was able to
make this work and write this paper.

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Abstract
My research takes place in my hometown, the rural community of Hope, B.C..
situated on the traditional territory of Chawathil First Nation and the Tiyt Tribe. The
Tiyt Tribes of the St :l territory extend along the boundaries down both sides of
the Fraser River.
Throughout my time at Emily Carr University of Art + Design I have engaged
with many forms of research, using my lens to look at the complex history of Hope
and its settler identity that is so deeply tethered to forms of extraction colonialism
and white supremacy. Using anti-colonial and Indigenous/Intersectional Feminist
theory as well as forms of lived experience rooted in coming of age and punk ethos
to unpack the questions; “How does extraction colonialism impact community? and
How do we form kinship in spite of embedded forms of white supremacy?” Through
experimental ilmmaking and analog photography, I work in a coming-of-age
framework to examine what it means to grow up in a place tethered to active forms
of extraction and colonial narratives.

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List of Figures
1. Isabella Dagnino, From Break My Body, Hold My Bones, 2022, medium
format inkjet print.// 10
2. My mother and I, from the archive of Alejandra Dagnino, 1997, Polaroid
photo .// 14
3. Rahim Fortune, I Can’t Stand To See You Cry, 2021. // 17
4. Isabella Dagnino, From Break My Body Hold My Bones, 2022, Medium
Format Inkjet print. // 19
5. Isabella Dagnino, from Break My Body, Hold My Bones, 2022, Medium
Format inkjet print. // 20
6. Isabella Dagnino, Still from Anything, Always, 2023, 16mm ilm, digital
output.// 26
7. Installation, 2022, work in progress at the State of Practice MFA
exhibition // 28
8. Isabella Dagnino, Still from Leave Me Here, 2023, 16mm ilm, digital
output // 32
9. Installation, 2023, Biometaphysicalmateria MFA Thesis Exhibition // 34

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My journey through this program has been anything but linear. I have carried
the weight of what it means to be brown and working class on my back while
ighting to exist for another day and survive this city, Vancouver; the stolen lands of
̓ m (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleilthe xʷməθkʷəyə
Waututh) Nations. Faced with grief and loss, I have been lucky to lean on my
chosen kin and the life my camera allows me to live. Through ire and ash it is my
art practice that has guided me forward; how I have been able to ind healing and
solace. I am a mix of Indigenous, Latinx and settler. Through my mother, my family
is from Chile and has ties to the Mapuche nation. Through my biological father, I
have a mixed heritage of Métis and Irish settler. Growing up my mother always
raised me with a strong understanding of who we were even in the displacement
we experienced in exile. Even though my father was not in the picture, my mother
always tried to ind ways to mend the fragmented strands of my identity and how I
sat with it. Being raised by a single mother who came to so-called Canada as a
political refugee, my community has become a weaving of both blood and chosen
kin. I am lucky to have been brought up by a strong network of BIPOC women who
have enveloped me with love and care. My mother, grandmother and aunties are
who have grounded me and shaped me. In the tradition of the women and femme
before me, I will not be holding back any punches and I will not be following a
strictly westernized framework of thesis writing. This document, like my art
practice, is an act of storytelling.

In support of this break from more colonial methodologies, I lean on Research
as Ceremony by Shawn Wilson. This text was gifted to me by my aunty Elsie when
she found out I had been accepted into this Masters program and has been
foundational in my approach to knowledge keeping in an institution still resolving

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Introduction

its history so entrenched in colonialism and white-centred curriculum. Research as
Ceremony has been a grounding text to learn from as it has shown me a path
forward that honours where I come from, my family, ancestors and community. As I
ask myself questions around this work I have made and how I want to continue
approaching my art practice, the quote “we cannot remove ourselves from our
world in order to examine it,”1 has stuck with me along the way. As I work through
the layers of history Hope, B.C. holds, I do it from a very personal place. In the
beginning, I questioned if that was the right step to take but as I dive deeper into
questions of kinship and community, I recognize I cannot untether myself from this
place.

I was raised for most of my life in the rural community currently known as
Hope. This is a place that holds a layered and complex history. A place of
gathering, where the Stó:lō and Kw’ikw’iyá:la River meet.2 Wild berries grow along
the cli edge of the cascade following where longhouses faced the river bend.3
Before becoming the township of just over 6,000 people it is today, Hope was a
trading post for the Hudson Bay Company.4 During the gold rush, settlers forcibly
formed the township of Hope. From there, the town heavily relied on mining as a
means of income. Once all the mines closed in the late 80s, logging became the
primary industry5. Deforestation led the town’s economy to plummet and from that
point on, it was in constant lux. In 2000 the company Nestle Waters opened

1 Wilson, Research Is Ceremony, (Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 2008)

page 14

2 Carlson, et al. A Stó:lō-Coast Salish Historial Atlas. (Douglas & McIntyre, 2001) page129
3 A used car lot now sits on the site of these longhouses
4 Statistics Canada, 2021 Census of Population. (Accessed February 27, 2023)
5 Stewart, The Canadian Encyclopedia. ( Accessed February 27, 2023)

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operations in Hope, further extracting natural spring water from the community.6
Later between 2016 and 2019, with the development of the Trans Mountain pipeline
as we know it now, crews began to take place and began to lay the ground work in
Hope and through the Canyon.7 This legacy of extraction is deeply embedded in
the settler identity of this town and with it comes all kinds of complexities. I work
with my medium format and Bolex camera within a framework of community to
look at the layered history of industry that lives in the places that shaped my
coming of age. I look to the words of Glen Coulthard in his text Red Skin, White
Masks; “Any strategy heard towards authentic decolonization must directly
confront more than mere economic relations; it has to account for the multifarious
ways in which capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and the totalizing character
of state power interact with one another to form the constellation of power
relations that sustain colonial patterns of behaviour, structures, and relationships.”8
This is something I carry as I unpack this legacy of extraction and how it carries
through us. I couple this challenge of capital and asymmetrical power dynamics
with the words of Gina Starblanket in the collection of essays Making Space for
Indigenous Feminisms; “Truly transformative analysis means integrating gender
into “the everyday” including attention to how resurgence can serve to reproduce
or challenge patriarchal power and privilege”9.

6 Subramaniam, “A Look into Nestle’s Controversial Water Bottling Business in Canada”, Vice

Canada. (Accessed February 27, 2023)

7 “Timeline: Key dates in the history of the Trans Mountain pipeline”, CBC, (Accessed February

27, 2023)

8 Glen Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition 4

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), page 14

9 Gina Starblanket, “Being Indigenous Feminists: Resurgences Against Contemporary

Patriarchy” in Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 2017) 36
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practice my responsibility to my BIPOC community by handling these stories that
come from the land and all of us with care. With these existing forms of thought at
the foundation of my practice, I tell the story of what it means to grow up in a place
that has been torn through by industry decade after decade. I unpack the
questions; “How does extraction colonialism impact community? How do we form
kinship in spite of embedded forms of white supremacy?” Through experimental
ilmmaking and analog photography depicting the community of Hope, I work
through this question in a coming of age framework. Examining active forms of
extraction and colonial narratives allows me to get more in-depth about my own
stories that are held in Hope. The mixed blessings, the joy and everlasting
friendships, but also the tension and the grit. A grit that gnashes between our teeth
naturally as folx from the Canyon.

Figure 1. Isabella Dagnino, From Break My Body, Hold My Bones, 2022, medium format inkjet print

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As I do this work especially in context of photography and ilmmaking I must

My Roots, My Lineage
Hope has always been home. My single mother and I moved back and forth
periodically throughout the early parts of my life but we would always ind our way
back to this small community nestled between the Canyon and the Fraser Valley.
Through my maternal lineage I have ties to Wallmapu; our traditional territory to
the South, a place currently known as Chile. The land of my people; the Mapuche
Nation. My mother’s family came to Canada as political refugees during the
Pinochet dicatorship. Both my grandparents were members of MIR (Movimiento de
Izquierda Revolucionaria) and fought against Augusto Pinochet’s fascist regime. My
grandfather was arrested defending our traditional territory. On September 11th,
1973, Operation Condor took place; Pinochet bombed the parliamentary palace La
Moneda and used the military to overthrow the democratically elected Socialist
government. On that day, my grandfather, great-grandfather, uncles, aunt and
numerous compañeros were arrested as communists and taken to the soccer
stadium that was turned into a site of torture and interrogation. My grandparents
were my age at the time with two children ighting for our people’s sovereignty. My
grandfather was later arrested for a second time and taken to the Quiriquina, an
Island o the coast of Chile that had been repurposed as a concentration camp
and site of torture. Once there, like many of his comrades, the military o icers
beat, starved and tortured him for days on end. Afterwards the o icers attempted
to disappear him along the ocean side. On the waters edge were Tren Tren and Kai
Kai meet he managed to escape and trekked across the Andes to Argentina; a
blessing I am eternally grateful for. From there he sent word to my grandmother
who was in a safe house with my uncle and mother. Soon they found themselves in
Manitoba, Canada: The Métis homeland. The traditional territory of my paternal
grandmother. A family I never got to know. A place I never have known. A place I
visit in dreams and hold close because I know it is a part of me. On both sides there

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is a history of displacement; uprooting due to forms of colonial violence. I share
this because to understand my art practice and my research you need to know this
history and this lineage, to know why the ire in me burns the way it does.
As I re lect on the past two years and my research process I look to the deep
ties of kinship I have been fortunate to form and radical action these bonds hold. I
am someone who was not raised on their traditional territory and while my family
has done everything they can to raise me knowing who I am and what it means to
be Mapuche in particular I am still a settler on this land. As I have grown up in Hope
I have been guided and held by many people in my community. As I worked
through my thesis work I re lected a lot on the women and femmes that have been
a part of my life and the lessons they have taught me throughout the years.

Growing up I was able to see women as leaders in the community. Aside from
my mother and grandmother I was always deeply in luenced by my aunties. My
Auntie Elsie Kipp is a community member of Yale First Nation; Since my teens I’ve
seen her take action as a community member helping organize the local MMIWG
march, organizing community Christmas meals, visiting elders and inding ways to
create community connection. She’s a writer, mother, my aunty and matriarch.
When I was in my undergrad she was one of the few people who pushed me and
believed in me not just as an artist but also as a researcher. She is someone who
carried me through a strange time in my life; when I think of the love in my family I
will always remember the care and kindness that radiates from her.

While reading Stó:lō knowledge keeper; Jo-Ann Archibald’s book Indigenous
Storywork I found myself re lecting a lot on the ways in which my chosen kin and
growing up in Hope has informed and shaped me. Throughout the book she speaks
extensively about the importance of respect, reverence, reciprocity and

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responsibility. Archibald weaves in personal stories with a mix of interviews and
re lections with community elders and knowledge keepers. In one chapter she
speaks more in-depth on the procedure and the respect we must give our
communities by asking for consent and guidance. The quote “It is respect and
caring that guides my feelings and actions, not an obligatory sense of duty,”10
resonated deeply with me. While approaching this research I move with a care and
respect for the people in my life who have shown me kinship. Throughout this
process there are times I am in a position where I am being trusted with peoples
stories and experience. These are moments I hold in my heart and look to the
lessons of care and reciprocity I have learned from my kin. It is these lessons that
have guided me and it is important as I move through this work I handle the stories
that come from this place with care.

The town of Hope, B.C. is where I came of age; cradled and supported by a
single mother and my BIPOC kin both blood and chosen. I learned to ride a bike
and drive there, drank my irst beer and smoked my irst joint, screamed with joy
and yelled in fear. It is where I learned who I was but also what I was made of. As a
young, poor, queer, Indigenous Latinx kid it was not the easiest place to grow up. I
look back at these moments now through my lens; exploring the emotional
textures that live within the land through celluloid ilm. I revisit my family home;
friends, sites of signi icance, and sites of extraction. I allow my experiences in life
to guide me in my research and as I develop this work, Break My Body, Hold My
Bones.

10 Archibald, Jo-Ann, Indigenous Storywork, ( Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 61

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Figure 2. My mother and I, from the archive of Alejandra Dagnino, 1997, polaroid photo

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I found my way to analog photography like most: high school art class. At
ifteen, with the guidance of my teacher and earliest mentor Chris Janzen, I learned
how to process, develop ilm and print from start to inish. I would spend hours
learning how to mix chemicals and properly set up the darkroom; every lunch hour
that’s where I was. I began to take my camera everywhere, documenting my
friends, family and everything and anything in my path. I felt a level of urgency to
document. At the time I didn’t fully understand my process or the purpose behind
this form of making. Looking back now it is ever so clear my want and need to tell
story. For my community and in my family, storytelling has been a way to share and
preserve our history, culture and tradition. When staring at the face of colonialism,
storytelling becomes an act of resistance. My path to storytelling is through my
camera. At the time I never really saw myself pursuing anything as a photographer.
Coming from a working class BIPOC background, a career in photography did not
necessarily feel attainable. It wasn’t until undergrad at UFV with the guidance of my
professor Grace Tsurumaru that I started to really explore my art practice and what
working with ilm meant to me.

As I re lect on this journey into my lens-based practice and my work with
celluloid-based photo making and ilmmaking I have looked at who has in luenced
me in the past and whose work I see myself in conversation with. I ind that even in
the early days of my practice I was drawn to other photographers telling stories of
community and kinship. More recently I have spent my time looking at other
contemporary photographers and lens-based artists working in a similar vein. Two
years ago I was gifted the seminal work by Rahim Fortune, I Can’t Stand To See You
Cry. Fortune is an Afro Indigenous lens-based artist with connections through his
maternal line to the Chickesaw Nation. His book I Can’t Stand To See You Cry is a

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Transforming Light

body of work that looks speci ically at Austin, Texas; one of the cities he spent his
coming of age in and where he was raised by his father. In this series he looks at
the changing landscape of his community in tandem with his experience as
caretaker for his dying father. Through the black and white ilm he brings out so
many complex emotions and forms of radical vulnerability. Fortune uses his camera
as a tool to tell Black history and examine forms of legacy. Although he is working
almost 50 years later, in many of the images one can see the in luence of the New
Topographics11 anchoring his documentary style photography. Many of the
cityscapes made me think of the likes of Robert Adams and the Bechers,
speci ically the way he captures architecture. What sets him apart is the fact he
isn’t an outsider looking in; these are spaces he has connection to and has
community in. Fortune honours a history often overlooked and erased in dominant
white society. By working with black and white celluloid ilm he responds to the
complex history of documentation our shared communities have faced over the
centuries as the over-studied and gazed-upon other. In both of our works we are
re lecting on the places which have formed us. We both challenge the legacy of
the ilm camera and actively dismantle forms of imperialism through lens practices.
Through his work he is looking at Austin, Texas and the complexities of being a
caretaker, the coming-of-age framework, and the foundation of white supremacy
that continues to linger in his community. In my images I am looking at the legacy
of industry that is held in every corner of our community. Incorporating images of
places that hold layered histories, images of the clear-cut land that stores the
physical piping for Trans Mountain shown alongside images of the neighbourhood I
grew up in, family and sites that hold layered histories. With the work of Rahim
Fortune I see a shared desire to unpack the histories held within community but
doing so in a way that still honours the struggle of what it means to exist in a world
11 Ragain, Melissa, author. “New Topographics.” Oxford Art Online, 2003.

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steeped in white supremacy, and the strength we ind as BIPOC in our
communities.

Figure 3. Rahim Fortune, I Can’t Stand To See You Cry, 2021

Both photography and experimental ilmmaking have been my main forms of
expression in my own coming of age; they are my way of storytelling. I have
practiced medium and large format photography now for most of my career as a
lens-based artist. I predominantly work with black and white ilm because it allows
for the texture of the ilm to come through and bring forward the story and
narratives I am trying to bring out. In the context of my thesis work, I believe black

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and white ilm is necessary to work with because of its history and connection to
legacy. The camera itself has been used as a tool of oppression in a lot of ways and
documentation itself has a very violent past. As an Indigenous Latinx person, I have
seen how my own communities have faced this irst hand, constantly seeing our
stories being told through a colonial lens. Because of this, I actively seek ways to
dismantle these legacies and am mindful of the ways I approach photography.
When I work with ilm, shooting, developing and processing, I put all of myself into
it and I make sure to handle the story carried with in it with care. Film holds so
much of everything. Each image a portal. Early in my studies at Emily Carr I found
myself become more and more drawn to motion. Many of my early images show
the rushing rivers I grew up learning from. During my time as a research assistant
with Lindsay McIntyre (who later became my supervisor and mentor) I began to
learn how to process and further work with motion picture ilm, more speci ically
16mm ilm. Working with her didn’t just give me a technical understanding of this
new form of visual storytelling but the important role we carry as Indigenous
storytellers behind the camera. It is through working with her I felt inspired to
explore experimental ilmmaking in my own practice.

Back in early March of 2021 I was fortunate to go out into the ield with Lindsay
as a research assistant. I will never forget this experience as it changed me and my
understanding of my art practice forever. I stood on the land as a guest;
introducing myself the way my aunties taught me. Standing amongst acres and
acres of deforestation my heart felt heavy; looking up I saw the few tall alders that
were left, swaying back and forth against the bright blue sky. It was in that moment
I thought of home and I felt a warmth come over me like a blanket. This was met
shortly by an overwhelming sense of fear; the kind that makes a little ball in your
stomach and sits there like a stone. Where was I in this moment? At the site of Fairy

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Creek blockade; the traditional territory of Pacheedaht First Nation. It was here I
knew what I was ighting for and what I want to do with my work. I saw how the
camera can be a tool of dismantling; one that could break the colonial systems it
once upheld. I saw how important this work really is.

Figure. 4.Isabella Dagnino, From Break My Body Hold My Bones, 2022, Medium Format Inkjet print

Coming-of-Age Framework
As I began to weave together all my thoughts and ideas for this body of work,
the importance of coming of age became more and more apparent. I started to
think of the parallels of growing up and how we connect with each other and the
world around us, and I realized I needed a way to process and guide narrative and
tell story. Within each frame lives a multitude of stories, by looking through a lens
shaped by the lived experiences of growing up in Hope I am able to create a visual

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dialogue with the memories that exist in each image. I meet the inner re lection of
my younger self to unpack the layers of white supremacy and colonial violence. As
I re lect on a particular image ( ig 5) of the word “Hope” spray painted across a tree
that stands along a trail I have walked many times, I can feel the anger and angst,
but also the blind con idence of being a sixteen year old from the Canyon. I think
back to being young in a town with little money and little to do; I think of how outof-town teens nicknamed us “Hopeless” and the way that has always stuck to the
back of my brain in the most uncomfortable way. As I remember a not so distant
past, I feel the violence an action like spray painting a tree takes. A disconnect with
the life that exists within the land and re lection of how the violence of extraction
moves through community.

Figure 5. Isabella Dagnino, from Break My Body, Hold My Bones, 2022, Medium Format inkjet print

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that have been deemed classics like The Catcher in the Rye, Little Women, or even
ilms like Sixteen Candles, Stand by Me or the more recent Lady Bird. In mainstream
media and pop culture there is still a very white-centred understanding of coming
of age and what that looks like. Through my lens I wanted to ind a way to tell a
di erent coming of age than we are used to. Moving away from an individualistic
understanding and a more community-centred understanding of growing up.
When I think about my experiences I recognize they were and are reverberations of
bigger issues in Hope and settler colonial culture. As young POC growing up in a
place formed by the systems that try to oppress us and have tried to oppress our
not so distant ancestors we emerge through acts of kinship. The only reason I am
able to do the work I do is because of those who continue to hold me close and
hold me up in spite of the ways colonialism try to divide and diminish. It is the
lessons of my aunty Eve, Frida, Barb and Elsie. The way my mother and
grandmother have and continue to walk through this life with me. My friends, my
kin both living and past who continue to hold me. In the face of extraction
colonialism our kinship becomes a radical form of liberation.

What She Said by Deanne Templeton was a catalyst for understanding a way
to work within a practice that re lects on coming of age. It is a mix of street
portraiture and personal storytelling. Templeton pulls from the personal artifact,
arranging old punk show tickets and photos from her teens along with personal
diary entries from growing up in the 1980s. She does this alongside portraits she
has taken over the years of young women from the surf, skate and punk scene that
she felt demonstrated a strength and tenacity she aspired to as a young woman.
She invites us to bear witness to a very vulnerable moment in her coming-of-age

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When coming of age comes to mind, many of us think of pieces of literature

story and contemplates the growing pains of being a young women in
communities that try to push against dominant society. This book came to me at a
point in my life where I was grappling with a lot of past trauma and has re-entered
my art practice again at a time where I am unearthing layers of trauma and
violence both in a outward context of social history and the inward context of the
personal. What She Said is a love letter of sorts, one we write to our former selves
in hopes they can feel the embrace and care that was lacking. Re lecting on the
lessons this body of work has given me has rooted me even more deeply in
working in a coming-of-age framework and understanding why it is so important
within my practice. Templetons work has been mostly in luential on how I approach
coming of age as a lens in my art practice but also how I write about it now. In her
writing there is a care and vulnerability that carries a power. I believe as someone
who is a POC, channeling this level of honesty and radical vulnerability can be
dismantling of the systems of oppression that we see in the everyday; that we feel
in the everyday.

A coming-of-age framework can become a form of storytelling. As I continue
with this work it becomes a guide of sorts. I pull from my roots as a Mapuche and
Métis person, but I also pull from the other communities that have formed and
shaped me. Growing up, I was quickly drawn to the punk and skate scene, a space
formed in de iance. It is in my blood to challenge dominant society and this is
where I found home. The ethos of punk is something I carry with me into every
aspect of life. Do-It-Yourself has always been a core value within punk and is
something deeply woven into the community’s ethos to this day. I resynthesize this
into a collective practice of Do-It-Together, bringing it back to collective
understandings of community. In the punk community we have always relied on
each other, sometimes even to keep it alive as a space to exist. When looking at

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forms of making in connection to these spaces I believe it is important to keep the
idea of collectivity central. As I look at how I have engaged with punk, I see the
intersection between the di erent forms of collective practice in the everyday
forms of making I grew up with. From making patches, pins, zines with my friends,
reworking shirts and jackets, it mirrors the beading and weaving I grew up with. All
things done collectively. These acts of collective protest feed my art practice as it
became so clear that these forms of making hold the tension of what it means for
me and my kin to break down the walls built up around us.

I will always hold the punk community close to my heart. However, as I have
moved through this program, I need to acknowledge how my relationship has
changed within punk and how it has shifted my thinking and approach to making.
When I irst moved to Vancouver I sought out community and found myself in so
many di erent spaces. I already had a connection to the punk scene which carried
through into Vancouver; I was connected to new folks and old. People from my
past and people I call kin now in my present. Unfortunately, in the irst semester of
the MFA I was assaulted by someone from within the punk community. The folks
who stood by me in this moment were my BIPOC and queer kin in the scene, but
even after that event I felt the distancing. I share this because it was a moment
that changed everything for me in this program. It happened silently and
unnoticed, but it had heavy reverberations. Through this experience, I realized
even the punk community, a space meant to be radical and dismantling of forms of
oppression, still had its laws, and at times, can continue to exercise the harms of
colonial violence. As I continue to process this event I am fortunate for the love of
my mother, my community, and my kin who have supported me in my healing.
After this I felt such an immense shift in my research and I unearthed a deep grief
which started to come through in my work. The darkroom became a place where I

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open, the feelings of grief and hurt no longer exist solely within me. I pull the
emotional textures my body shares with the story of extraction that lives within the
ilm.

During the Summer of 2022 I had the opportunity to be a part of the Response
Residency at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, where I was mentored by
artists I have looked up to. I had the opportunity to make a short 16mm ilm that
was later shown alongside eight other Indigenous artists. The short experimental
ilm I made Anything, Always, explored memory, grief and longing for home and
kin. It is a letter to my ancestors both present and past; it’s about what it feels like
to move through loss and what it means to ind healing. This was my irst
completed work made using 16mm ilm as a way of sharing story. In many ways this
also marked another shift in my practice. Experimental ilmmaking has become this
way I am able to tell story of existing in the in-between, afterlife and rebirth. As I
brought the 16mm practice forward into the thesis work to explore these questions
of coming of age in the context of extraction, I really felt the layered feelings of
past and present coming forward. How old emotions we treat as ghosts ind their
way burned into the celluloid.

As BIPOC women and femmes, colonial violence cut into us deeper than any. A
text I have re lected on constantly in my art practice is Making Space For
Indigenous Feminism. In this collection of essays edited by Joyce Greene, di erent
Indigenous leaders and knowledge keepers contribute thought-provoking and
powerful pieces of writing exploring the necessity for Indigenous feminism. It is
within this text I have found strength and the language to express the parallels
between the colonial violence of extraction we ind not just on the land but also on

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could allow everything that lived inside me to pour out. As I allow my body to break

our bodies as racialized women and femmes. A passage that I’ve re lected upon a
lot during my research is “For Indigenous decolonization and for Indigenous
feminism, the connection with and alienation from land remain major political
factors. Colonialism and its successor settler states are predicated on the theft of
and exploitation of Indigenous lands and the oppression of Indigenous peoples,
justi ied by the racist myths that are still encoded in settler cultures.”12 What this
world has taught me is that our bodies are disposable in the colonial state,
something to exploit, something to further extract. A coming-of-age framework
provides a way to work through and unpack these systems of extraction and
exploitation from a wider context of Hope, B.C. and then bring out the emotional
textures of growing up. Working in both photography and experimental ilmmaking
i’m able bring out ideas of memory and place-based legacy from a place of growth.
In my photography I am continuously documenting places I have seen over and
over again; places that speak to the identity of Hope. Flowers growing out of my
grandmother’s fence, the skate park where I spent endless evenings, religious
signage that hangs in the church window; a lingering reminder of the hold
christianity has on settler colonial identity. All forms of imagery speaking to coming
of age in the Canyon. I have found experimental ilmmaking has taken this research
further as I believe the way I am able to bring moving images together brings out
the memories and emotions that live in the land. Through this framework I am able
to pull from the layered history; the history I carry, the history that is now embodied
within me.

A coming-of-age framework allows me to bring in artistic elements that I carry
within me. My practice with celluloid ilm has been in the making since my teens.

12 Joyce Green, “Taking More Account of Indigenous Feminism” in Making Space for

Indigenous Feminism (Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 2017) p.4

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Even now when I work with it, I feel a familiarity with the material. We know each
other and have lived through many lives together. It has carried me and been my
anchor throughout my life and been a way to heal from trauma, show joy, love and
grief. A tool of transformation, of storytelling, and of dismantling.

Figure 6. Isabella Dagnino, Still from Anything, Always, 2023, 16mm ilm, digital output.

Portals and Plywood
During my time at Emily Carr, I spent the irst year exploring my practice quite
a bit, but within that time, I have also taken time to think about how I want my work
to be seen. I’ve thought a lot about colonial systems at play in the traditional white
cube of the gallery and I have realized the importance of disrupting these ideas
and confronting ideas of who these spaces are for. In many ways art institutions
and galleries have internalized and upheld forms of white supremacy, sexism and
colonialism. We see this manifest in the way marginalized artists and thinkers are
extracted of their labour and knowledge within these spaces. Many of these spaces
try to absorb the language of decolonization and anti-oppression but do very little

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in the everyday to enact the true meaning behind these actions. It is in this space I
feel the profanity of how my work can exist as someone who sits at the intersection
of Brown, Queer and Poor. My work, and this thesis document, are intended to
challenge this institution. I do not write for the gate keepers; those who keep
education inaccessible and for the privileged few. I do this work for my community;
I write in this format for every mutt kid that walks through our university doors. This
document will land across colonial eyes and so will my artwork, but it doesn’t mean
I have to cater to them. When I work through my choices of how I install my work, I
re lect upon an early in luence and fellow disrupter of sorts: Wolfgang Tillmans.

Wolfgang Tillmans was one of the irst artists I was exposed to that broke away
from the “traditional" presentation of photography. Hanging images unframed by
binder clips, all at di erent scales. Hanging images high on a wall and low to the
ground. At times arranging them in clusters and some scattered sparsely; never
following a linear pattern. As I continue to work with photography and ilmmaking
as a form of storytelling, I have wanted to express this in physical form. Over the
years I’ve played with the way I arranged my images, following the likes of my
predecessors’ freeing the image from the frame and arranging them in ways that
could increase their relationally and bring out the stories and worlds that live within
them.

When I got to Emily Carr University of Art + Design I played a lot with the size of
my images how I arranged them on the wall. As I began to piece together the role
of industry in my community and my experiences as a teen, I knew I needed to ind
ways to bring that out. The irst big shift I made in the studio was to bring an image
o the wall and install it onto a pallet I had salvaged. Growing up in a rural
community there was not a lot to do as teens and we would ind ways to amuse

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ourselves. Re lecting back it was maybe one of the most volatile times in my life;
driving up logging roads with friends, partying in the woods where there is no cell
reception and no easy access to leave. We would take those same pallets I used for
installation and burn them with gasoline well into the night. I will never forget the
smell in the morning of burned fuel and charred up wood. The pallets themself
echoed these memories from my youth but speak to extraction and the role they
play in industry. Pallets are supportive structure, they are used in extraction,
construction, transport. They are used to build living structures and garden
containers. In my photo-based work, they became a way to intercept the white
cube. A symbol of industry, and of being working class but also making do with
what one has. The multiple pallet interventions led me to a irm understanding in
how I wanted to show the photography aspect of my practice for the thesis
exhibition.

Figure 7. Installation, 2022, work-in-progress at the State of Practice MFA Exhibition

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I carry all these important lessons with me and into my art practice and my
inal thesis work. My thesis exhibition consists of three separate works that are
informed by the research I have been engaging with over the course of this
program.
The sculptural piece I made that I showed at the thesis exhibition brings
together previous work and concepts I was working with very early on. Using an
old screen-printed tarp from an earlier exploration and two pallets gifted to me by
water protector, activist and poet, Rita Wong, I brought together to create the
piece “Untitled”. This piece uses pallets once a part of the Kwekwecewtxw Watch
House on Burnaby Mountain. The structure itself is connected to my previous
studio exploration using salvaged materials to echo the forms similar to the ones
from my youth. The thrashed piece of tarp I attach to this structure is from a
previous studio exploration. I repurpose this tarp that was once a tool of extraction
by using screen printing and beadwork to tell a story of what Hope holds. The
beadwork speaks to my heritage as a Mapuche and Métis person; the labour and
memories embedded in the work and what they represent. By working with
materials that hold layered meanings of coming-of-age, labour, home, and
displacement, I aim to articulate the way in which all weave and converge.

Leave Me Here is a two-channel video that was shot on 16mm ilm over the
Summer and Fall of 2022. Looped on video projectors side-by-side I juxtapose
images of mosh pits, rushing rivers, the trees I grew amongst, gra iti tags that
once belong to friends, and industry. I use double exposures and cut in and out of
moments for the viewer to experience the way memories bleed in and out of each
other. It is meant to feel dissociating and tense at times as the videos side by side
fall in and out of sync. My approach to this project re lects on my most recent visit

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The Point Where Everything Meets

back to Hope. This past Fall was the irst time I brought a partner home. As I
showed him where I had grown up, it was with a bitter sweetness. Even though I
regularly make the trip back, the impact of industry on the community felt much
harder and heavier. Drilling in the river I grew up walking along, seeing all along the
mountain range the ground torn up to lay the pipeline. Every time I drive into town I
see it along the mountain’s edge into town and up the Canyon. It’s strange to see a
place where so many of my formative years were spent being reshaped by industry.
Whose stories will continue to live on? As I continued to unpack my research with
every visit, I felt like I was existing more and more in this in-between-like state; inbetween time and memory. This video piece is a re lection of the way we exist in
the tension and the ways we come together but also come apart.

With this video installation, I weave together the di erent concepts and ideas I
have been working through in my research. I handle the footage with care and am
careful how I share this with an audience (to some extent, I do not have control
over who will see this and how they will carry the stories). As I assembled Leave Me
Here I knew it needed to be clear this is a part of the same research I have been
engaging with but it also exists on its own. I allowed the ilm itself to inform me as I
made the piece. As a person watches, they do not necessarily need to know
everything about Hope, its history, or how the the images it together. I invite
people to bear witness and see a fragmented, non-linear experience of what it
means to grow up in the Canyon. Through the celluloid I tell the story of holding
kin close while coming up against the systems that try to dismantle our
communities.

For this piece, I collaborated with the sound artist, musician, sound engineer,
and dear friend Jayson Klein. Our collaboration brings forward and pulls out the

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emotional textures that live within each frame. The element of sound becomes an
ampli ier. Throughout the piece, lingering feelings of grief and anger build to a
point of strong tension then fall apart into a dismantled fragmentation. The score is
meant to bring out the stories coming through the celluloid and echo the feelings
of coming of age in a place de ined by forms of extraction colonialism.
Collaborating with someone who I have a connection to was a really enriching
experience and I am glad I was able to work with someone who I could trust.

The third piece I made was an installation of two years worth of photography
on a L shaped plywood structure. I have, in past iterations, I arranged the images in
a non-linear fashion all around the plywood structure. I do this with the intention of
breaking away from the Western tradition of display, but also to bring out the
narratives carried in the work. Clusters like communities, like constellations. Some
images high and some low lowing like the waterways I grew up amongst. I found I
favoured the plywood structure as it is disruptive in all the right ways. As BIPOC
artists we experience levels of hostility time and time again especially in the gallery
space. This structure becomes a home. When I could not ind space for my work in
the gallery I decided to build it. My maternal grandfather gave me the gift of
knowing how to stretch a dollar and make do with what I have. I bring this practice
into the institution. This making do is a practice of building home handed down.
My wall structure does not it in with the gallery aesthetic. It is unre ined. But it is a
home, and when the show is over I can easily pack up and move. A home born of
displacement but a home none the less. Like my kin before me I ind a way to hold
space for community in the fragmentation created by colonial violence.

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Figure 8. Isabella Dagnino, Still from Leave Me Here, 2023, 16mm ilm, digital output

Re lection
At the thesis exhibition I had my grandmother, my mother, cousins, uncles,
aunts and friends come through. These are the people who have seen me grow
and guided me along the way. These are my kin, my family, my community. As I
look back at my journey I am grateful that the people who have carried me through
were able to bear witness to this work. My research is centred around ideas of
community and to have my community present in the gallery space brought
forward a lot of my research into a real physical actualization. I am grateful to have
them and for some of the most important people in my life to be able to see what
the years of sacri ice, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears have accomplished.

Over the past two years I have gone through a lot in my life and in my art practice.
A project like this brings out all kinds of joy and gratitude but also grief and trauma.
When I irst began this journey I was afraid of leaning too deeply into the personal.
I constantly kept a distance from the work and worried about letting too much of
myself in. I worried the larger conversation would be lost and I would fail my
responsibility to my community. In these moments I re lect back on the words of

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Jo-Ann Archibald and how as we do a community-based work we must do so
guided with our hearts. As I continue in this research, I recognize the necessity of
allowing myself to be a part of the work. Leading with care is what has lead me
through the toughest moments in this program and in my practice. As I continue to
explore visual storytelling through celluloid ilm I hope to carry the lessons I have
learned with me.

After I graduate I plan to continue exploring the ways a coming-of-age framework
can serve as a tool to research the parallels of one’s own experiences and the ways
they weave in and out of the forms of oppression we see upheld in white dominant
society. Over the past two years I have been able to develop a voice for myself and
I plan to continue this development as I continue to make work. This process has
provided a window into how to work in a meaningful way and be guided by
practices of care and kinship. As I keep working in a lens-based practice I will
continue in this way as it has become fully embedded in how I handle story. As I
re lect on the inal work I showed in the thesis exhibition, I felt everything come
together. Looking at the layered history of extraction colonialism through a
coming-of-age framework gave me a better understanding of where I want to take
my research in the future. In this inished work I showed a two-channel ilm Leave
Me Here that I touch on earlier in this document. Working in motion picture ilm
changed a lot for me and became an ampli ier as I began to really understand
visual storytelling. Over the past two years I have been able to work with the
celluloid as a collaborator; as I continue to grow in my practice this is something I
want to continue to explore.

As I continue to understand the power of celluloid and the forms of visual
storytelling held within experimental ilmmaking, I plan to delve deeper in

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understanding the technical. I am interested in learning about eco-processing and
alternative processing techniques; I look to eco-processing as a way to explore the
ways we learn from the ecological world around us. I believe forms of cameraless
ilmmaking and alternative processing will provide space to further work through
memory. I plan on exploring more abstract ways of working as a way to further
collaborate with celluloid as I begin to really unpack ideas around how we embody
place and memory. I believe this form of exploring aligns with the ways celluloid
ilm holds story and how I can work with it as a way to dismantle rather than uphold
systems of oppression.

Figure 9. Installation, 2023, Biometaphysicalmateria MFA Thesis Exhibition

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