Witness
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Laina Geetah
Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes
Walker Walls Tarver
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curated by Danica Pinteric
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until 29 June
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There was a time in my life when I felt acutely watched. From a window in my bedroom, a room I inherited from someone else.​
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It began one evening, a weeknight. I noticed a figure moving around the room across the laneway. Our homes were a mirror image of each other. Semi-detached houses in a part of the city where Little Tibet met Little Poland. The figure was looking in my direction, looking into my room.
He could have been my twin, or a lover. He could have been a friend, a secret, a hallucination, an alien, a guardian angel. I was thirteen years old and he was a few grades ahead of me. Late teens. At the time, a monumental timescale.
We never met in person, but I would often turn to look out my window in the night. I remember a dense shadow, his silhouette pressing starvedly against the window. Severed in two, by a thin window pane. The same style that would split the morning sun apart on my floorboards as I arose each day.
Under cold moonlight, I’d catch the warm box of his bedroom window, punctuated by the shadow. With bated breath, I drew my blinds whenever I changed or slept. But I couldn’t live with the blinds drawn, in the dew of my youth. The next day would be a repeat cycle, another rehearsal. His silhouette, his light. The object of his gaze uncertain, mine to extrapolate.
Sometimes, I would stare back, from the corner of my window. Crouched down, looking for any sign of action — lights on or off, movement, masturbation — to confirm or deny my suspicions. A blinking red light or a wandering shadow, a prop, or new piece of furniture. Eventually there was a flash. What was there to capture?
The sun, the moon, the sun, the moon, the sun persisted. Time persisted. The corners of my room expanded and contracted as my ego bloomed. It went on for weeks, the shadow of his height suspended indefinitely. A distortion.
Over time, my limbs became extended and movements exaggerated. I would stand and watch myself in a mirror and turn to look out the window, imagining an exchange. Imagining what his face looked like up close. Imagining we could communicate telepathically. Imagining my quiet moments of homework and privacy and growing up could be deciphered by him, a kind of Morse code. Imagining I was transparent, that all he beheld was an empty room with drawers that opened and closed on their own. This is how I became my own subject.
In other parts of my life, I was growing accustomed to being seen: to sharing my thoughts, pronouncing and spelling my name, answering questions about my family. And time continued to slide down the crescent. The sun, the moon, my spotlight. My orbit, my possession.
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Laina Geetah was born on October 25, 1998 in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Laina’s biological parents are the late Tanya Curley and Johnny Pootoogook. She was adopted by David Simiga and Saila Geetah. Laina has 4 sisters and 4 brothers.
Laina comes from an artistic family on the Pootoogook side. She is a self-taught artist and started drawing at the age of 18. She likes to draw anything or everything she likes. Laina will continue to pursue her art as long as she can.
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Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes (b. 1991, Hong Kong) lives and works in New York. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Dear Big Hush, Towards, Toronto, Canada; Tells, april april, Pittsburgh, USA; Infinity Ball, Unit 17, Vancouver, Canada; My Owns, Project Native Informant, London, UK; Everything Leaks, Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver; Keep Your Eyes On Your Prizes, Calaboose, Montreal. Select group exhibitions include Iowa Projects, Brooklyn; Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York; Rose Easton, London; the National Gallery of Canada.
In 2022 Holmes was the recipient of the New Generation Photography Award from the National Gallery of Canada. She was the winner of the second annual Lind Prize in 2017. Holmes received her BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and is currently finishing her MFA at Hunter College in New York.
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Walker Walls Tarver (b. 1995) lives and works between New York, San Antonio and Colorado Springs. She received her MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2023, where she was a Gilbert Fellow, and just completed a year teaching at her alma mater Colorado College, where she received her BA in 2018. Tarver is the daughter of Claire Alexia Walls, the sister of Nanette-Rose Walls Tarver, and the granddaughter of Tinka Tarver and Grace Walls. She is the grand-niece of Vernetta Tolliver, Geraldine Graves, Gertrude Graves, Diane Graves, and Rose Marie Graves, and the great-granddaughter of Nannette Anderson, Rose Frances Johnson, Mildred Hackett, and Jennie Walker Banks.
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Danica Pinteric is a curator and writer based in Toronto. She is the founder of Joys (est. 2022), an independent gallery dedicated to exploring the politics of vulnerability and embracing the poetic opportunities in exhibitionary making. Danica was recently an Exhibition Curator for Nuit Blanche Toronto 2024 and has worked at the Goldfarb Gallery (formerly the Art Gallery of York University), Vtape, and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Her writing has been featured by a variety of galleries and publications, including C Mag, Stedelijk Studies, and Contemporary Art Galleries Association (AGAC). Danica volunteers at the Toronto Public Library on Tuesdays.