Essere Canadese

2025

Essere Canadese is a project that encapsulates the way identity can manifest itself in a space. My photographs address my relationship with my heritage through my grandparents and their home. Growing up Italian-Canadian, meant that I resonated most with my identity when visiting my grandparents. This body of work documents the little spaces in their home where their identity is shown through, that I remember so fondly admiring as a young girl.

On a deeper level, Essere Canadese discusses identity and grief, how losing a cultural pillar impacts the space and my identity simultaneously. In the time frame of these images, my grandfather had just been hospitalized for his dementia and we would go on to lose him, just a few months later. My images form a dialogue between both realities, identifying and wanting to associate with your cultural identity and having to lose someone so closely associated with it. Through these images, we witness a sense of loss in the spaces that go untouched.