Teach Me How To Hold

The artists in this group exhibition curated by Davida Carta–Genesis Báez, Pia Paulina Guilmoth, and Farah Al Qasimi–are photographers whose images ask viewers to consider the act of holding: not only who is holding, but who is being held, and under what conditions. Holding can steady, contain, protect, or restrict. It is often associated with care, but it can also suggest control. Hands may comfort or direct; a gesture may communicate affection while also establishing authority. The photographs in Teach Me How to Hold show hands gripping a shoulder, fingers tightening around fabric, tools, the frame of another body. What binds bodies together is never neutral, but produced through effort, responsibility, and connection.

Báez is a Puerto Rican artist in in New York who explores memory, identity, and inherited forms of care through touch, family history, and gestures of intimacy. Guilmoth lives in rural Maine; she uses a 4×5 camera and experimental analog techniques to create work about beauty and her experience as a trans woman in her small town. Al Qasimi was born in Abu Dhabi and is now based in New York. She investigates relationships between people, animals, objects, and built environments.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Patrick and Marcelle Leahy Fund for Photography.