Tuesday, November 11 | 12:30-2:30pm
A sandwich is not a gun.
A hairbrush is not a gun.
A wallet is not a gun.
Since the year 2000, United States police have “mistaken” at least 40 distinct objects as guns during shootings of a majority of young black American men. None of the victims were armed.
This Is Not A Gun is a socially engaged artwork led by Cara Levine whose purpose is to open space for healing and creative activism while cultivating an increased awareness of racial profiling, police brutality, and societal trauma in America. Join us for a participatory workshop sculpting objects mistaken as guns while in conversation with fellow community members.
This Is Not a Gun engages with the public through community-driven ceramic workshops hosted by artists, activists, healers, and mindfulness collaborators. Together, participants shape these mistaken-as-gun objects in clay, giving presence to their form, the human rights violations, and racism prevalent in America today. This Is Not A Gun endeavors to carve out time and space for a community to cite these issues–the injustices inflicted at the hands of law and order–within our own bodies and stories. The collective labor we offer is in deference to and an act of respect towards those directly carrying these burdens. Each workshop upholds a nonjudgemental space for sharing amongst anyone who participates, and conversation is catalyzed from making and feeling.
Thus far, there have been over 30 iterations of the workshop in multiple cities with dozens of collaborating organizations across the activist and fine art worlds. This project is directed by Cara Levine and presented in collaboration with OJMCHE, Don’t Shoot PDX, and Pacific Northwest College of Art.
About Don’t Shoot PDX
Don’t Shoot Portland is a grassroots arts and education organization that promotes social justice and civic participation. Our mission is to harness the power of creative expression to inspire, educate, and mobilize communities towards equity, justice, and transformative social impact. Learn more: www.dontshootpdx.org / @dontshootpdx
About the Artist
Cara Levine is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA. She earned a BFA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI (2007) and an MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA (2012). She explores themes of absence, empathy, and equity through a practice encompassing studio-based artmaking, social engagement, and curatorial projects. Unifying her work is the belief that art practice is tasked to reveal and explore otherwise irreconcilable realities, both personal and collective, historic and current. She is the founder of This Is Not A Gun, a multidisciplinary project aiming to create awareness and activism through collective creative action. In 2023, she founded Outlook Is ___ Projects, an experimental art space in the storefront of her Los Angeles studio. Her work has been presented in one-person, group exhibitions, and participatory events in venues around the world such as the The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco (2023), MOCA Geffen Warehouse, Los Angeles, CA (2020); Creative Time, New York, NY (2019); The Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK, (2019), Tenderloin Museum, San Francisco, CA (2017); Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; Wattis Institute For Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA (2012); and Kyoto Seika University, Kyoto, Japan (2006). Levine has participated in residency programs including Santa Fe Art Institute (2017); The Arctic Circle, International Territory of Svalbard (2017); Sedona Arts Colony, Sedona, AZ (2016); SIM Residency, Reykjavík, Iceland (2015); Anderson Ranch, Aspen, CO (2014); and Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT (2013). Levine is currently an associate adjunct professor at Otis College of Art and Design, a Lucas Arts Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center (2024-2027) and a Cultural Leadership Fellow at the Mandel Institute (2023-2025). Lastly, Levine has worked with the disability arts community since 2011 in roles at various progressive art studios including the Exceptional Children’s Foundation, Inglewood, CA and Creative Growth, Oakland, CA. She organized the first annual Self-Taught Artists Fair with Public Annex in Portland, OR in 2017.