John Vaccaro

... is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist and designer seeking to undermine normative configurations of bodies and/in spaces. He holds a professional Master of Architecture degree from the McGill University Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture where he was awarded the Ping Kwan Lau Prize in Architecture for his final design project, Rehearsing the (*) Bathroom: A Collection of Scenographic Studies, and has published work on film, gender, and space. He has also collaborated with Sheila Nadimi and Hassan Saab on the research and design of a 392-page photography book and archiving project titled Eagle Village: A Deep Mapping of Fallow Architecture (2025).


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    Eagle Village: A Deep Mapping of
    Fallow Architecture


    Limited print, 150 numbered copies
    Linen wrap hardcover with deboss
    9 x 12 inches
    392 pages / 234 photographs
    Published: June 3, 2025
    ISBN 978-2-9823098-0-7
    © Sheila Nadimi 2024

    Text and Photography
    Sheila Nadimi

    Book Design and Illustrated Maps
    Hassan Saab, John Vaccaro, and Sheila Nadimi

    Contributions by Gail Nahwahquaw (Menominee), Emory Shaw, Ronald Geronimo (Tohono O’odham), and C.J. Guadarrama

    Printing and Binding by Graphiscan
    Book Photographs by Tavish Kincaid

    Eagle Village: A Deep Mapping of Fallow Architecture assembles a decades-long engagement with a vast network of boarded-up military buildings at the edge of Brigham City, Utah. Using the same architectural footprint, this infrastructure shifted from a WWII Army Hospital to the Intermountain Indian School—the largest of the off-reservation federal Indian boarding schools. Opened by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1950 with enrollment limited to Diné students from the Navajo Nation, the school was renamed the Intermountain Inter-Tribal Indian School in 1974, expanding enrolment to tribal communities from all over the United States. Upon the closure of the school in 1984, the buildings lay dormant for decades. After an effort to repurpose them as a New Urbanist townhome community to be called Eagle Village, the masterplan was abandoned, the buildings demolished over years, and the land cleared.
            Initiated in 1996, Eagle Village takes a deep mapping framework to reveal the cultural and political forces that shaped and reimagined this site over time and generates a spatial archive of place following over 25 years of observation, outreach, research, and contemplation. At its core, this project is an engagement with the material traces of some of the key narratives of American society. More than clarifying what unfolded on this parcel of land, Eagle Village presents its contradictions and paradoxes.






    Intermountain Inter-Tribal Indian School (1974-1984) Map

    To date, Eagle Village has been acquired by: the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts / the American Philosophical Society / John Abbott College / Université de Québec à Montréal / the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art / Preston Idaho municipal library / Weber State University Stewart Library / Utah State University Merrill-Cazier Library / University of Utah Marriott Library / University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library Special Collections / Tohono O’odham Community College / Brigham City Utah Museum of Art and History / Brigham City Utah municipal library / Diné College, Navajo Nation / Utah State University, Brigham City Campus / the Canadian Center for Architecture / McGill University / Columbia University Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library / Dartmouth College special collections / University of Toronto Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library / Cornell University Olin Library / Princeton University Firestone Library Special Collections / the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives

    Eagle Village: Sheila Nadimi Exhibition


    Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art
    Logan, Utah, USA
    January 24, 2025 – January 17, 2026

    Contributed two maps which are also featured in Eagle Village: A Deep Mapping of Fallow Architecture.

     Curatorial Text:

    Using a manual Hasselblad medium-format camera, multidisciplinary artist Sheila Nadimi first set out in 1996 to photograph what was left of the Intermountain Indian School. The campus was comprised of twenty-seven dormitory buildings, two school buildings, a gymnasium, and a maintenance building. Nadimi chose photography as a medium for this project to convey the overall sense [...] of this architectural site which she photographed until 2021—over a twenty-five-year period following the demolition of the buildings and clearing of the land. Initially intrigued by the austere architecture, once inside, she found that the imprint of the former Native American students was still there, seen in artwork on the walls throughout the buildings.
            The exhibition consists of thirty-six 20 x 20 inch photographs selected from hundreds of images by Nadimi with input from Intermountain Indian School alumni.