Origin Studios worked with long-time collaborator curator Jeff Thomas to design Emergence from the Shadow: First Peoples' Photographic Perspectives, rich with metaphor and meaning, using shadow and light as primary design inspirations. Projected images and shadows were used to suggest the ghost-like presence of ancestors. Works by Indigenous artists were placed opposite displays about anthropologists who studied Indigenous cultures, allowing objects to become their own authors. Anthropological photos were left unframed, sandwiched between plexiglass panels and raised from the wall like specimens, allowing them to be interpreted as scientific rather than artistic.