In the summer of 2026, the School of Cities had the pleasure of supporting Early Career Canadian Urban Leader Dana Prieto’s exhibition discard studies: forms of containment. Hosted at Gallery TPW in Toronto’s Dufferin Grove neighbourhood, the exhibition was open for several weeks between August and September and integrated various pieces of community-centred, artist-driven programming.
Curated by Katie Lawson and featuring works by Prieto, Laura Pitkanen, and Laura Grier, the exhibition examined colonial histories and the ongoing effects of nuclear waste disposal and containment across Canada.
discard studies represented the culmination of Dana Prieto’s time with the School of Cities. Dana Prieto joined the school in the spring of 2025, as its 2025-26 Early Career Canadian Urban Leader (ECCUL). She’s a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and researcher, born in Buenos Aires and based in Tkaronto. Prieto’s site-responsive practice manifests in installation, performance, writing, and diverse collaborations, diving into the social, political, and chemical ties that connect people to the land where they stand.
discard studies stems from research that Prieto began developing during a commission for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art, when she engaged with the histories of the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga and the radioactive waste storage facility located between Small Arms and Lake Ontario. Titled Footnotes for an Arsenal, the work contends with Canada’s long-standing role as a nuclear nation, and the diverse forms of containment through which its nuclear infrastructures shape life and death in the city.
About discard studies
discard studies involved several pieces of supplemental programming. Following the opening reception on August 19, Dana led an artist walk of the exhibit for members of the community. On August 30, the exhibition hosted a community farmer’s market in collaboration with the Courtyard & Scarborough Farmer’s Market, a community organization advancing food justice and access for residents of Scarborough and the GTA. The farmer’s market was followed by a public conversation with artists Laura Grier and Laura Pitkanen, Jennifer Forde of the Courtyard & Scarborough Farmer’s Market, and moderated by Dana Prieto. The final piece of programming was a walkthrough led by curator Katie Lawson on September 4. Between each instance of programming, the gallery was open to the general public.
From the establishment of uranium mines on Anishinaabe and Dene lands to sites of radioactive waste processing and disposal, the costs of sustaining Canada’s role as a nuclear nation have disproportionately fallen on Indigenous lands and communities.
The work of Laura Grier, a Sahtu Délı̨nę artist, researcher, and printmaker included in the show, expands the exhibition’s geographies, connecting them to histories and ongoing impacts of nuclear violence around Great Bear Lake and in Délı̨nę, where community members unknowingly handled uranium ore extracted from Port Radium and shipped south for processing in Port Hope, Ontario. Some of this uranium entered the supply chain of the Manhattan Project and the production of the first atomic bombs.
discard studies included works that implemented multiple media, utilizing textiles, sculptures, videos, audio work, ceramics, and printmaking. The largest and most prevalent piece of the show was a large fabric print depicting a nuclear waste site, entitled Moss blind (2026) and created by Prieto. This piece is a commentary on the relationship between moss and nuclear waste, as the former often absorbs the latter after it’s been disposed of.
The next piece made by Prieto is a print entitled Duty of Care (2026), which depicts a demonstration staged in the 1980s by residents of Malvern, who learned that they had unwittingly been living above nuclear-contaminated soil for years. As a protest, they brought wagons full of the afflicted soil to Queen’s Park. This story also provided inspiration for Prieto’s third piece, A minor protest (2026) – a recreation of the wagon used in the protest and made from soil retrieved from Queen’s Park.
The fourth work by Prieto is a series of drawings entitled A pack of cigarettes (2026) rendered in Crawford Lake soil and depicting physical and symbolic representations of nuclear containment. Central to these drawings is one depicting Pelly, a mascot of Ontario Power Generation intended to make the nuclear industry appear harmless and friendly to the observer.
One of the main contributors to the project was Sahtu Délı̨nę First Nations artist and printmaker Laura Grier. Grier’s practice centres on Indigeneity, aesthetics, and language. Grier’s work for discard studies is particularly potent, as the Dene people are one of the most affected by Canada’s nuclear colonialism. Grier contributed several mixed-media installations. First were two existing screenprint pieces entitled Somba ke and Tudze (2017) which display excerpts of dialogues with Dene Elders concerning their nation’s stories and legends.
The second piece was a two-channel ambient video entitled Natúdze (2026), depicting contrasting shorelines of Great Bear Lake in Deline people’s land in the Northwest Territories and Lake Ontario. The two channels highlight the aesthetic difference between the clean, pristine waters of Great Bear Lake and the green, algae-riddled shores of Lake Ontario, across which much of Canada’s nuclear material was shipped.
The final major contribution to discard studies was a sound piece entitled Dear Kids (2026) by critical geographer and interdisciplinary music and sound composer Laura Pitkanen. The piece is a commentary on Canada’s nuclear colonial program, and explores alternate and subversive histories of resistance to it.
