This is Not a Gun: the objects police mistook for weapons before shooting | Art

As coronavirus rages in California, Cara Levine’s exhibition is under lockdown. Visitors must make an appointment with the artist directly so she can let them in to see her work. Which does, at least, guarantee a very personal VIP tour.

It reminds Levine of her days as an exchange student in Japan, where artists would always set their own shows. “I thought it was so bizarre,” she recalls, shortly before her first appointment is due. “You’d walk in and look at the work and you’d ask somebody about it, and you were talking to the artist! I’m like, oh, OK, that’s what I’m doing right now.”

The content of Levine’s exhibition is no less out of the ordinary. At the Tiger Strikes Asteroid gallery in Los Angeles, the 36-year-old is showing handmade ceramics of objects that police mistook as guns in the shooting of unarmed civilians, most of whom were black.

It is part of This Is Not a Gun, Levine’s project that aims to create awareness of police brutality, systematic racism and activism. The initiative has three parts: the carvings made in her studio, public workshops with collaborators and now a book of essays and illustrations by 40 artists, writers and healers.

This Is Not a Gun traces its origins to December 2016 when a friend sent Levine an article from Harper’s magazine. The item reads: “Trigger Warning. From a list of objects that were mistaken for guns during shootings of civilians by police in the United States since 2001” and goes on to include items such as shower rod, bottle of cologne, cane, sandwich and toy truck.

Levine says: “I’m not actually entirely sure why my friend sent it specifically to me, except that I have a belief in the ability of objects to carry a story. I have a longstanding interest in the history of objects as a sculptor and as a maker. When I saw the list, of course I was shocked and appalled. How could anyone mistake a cellphone or a set of keys as a gun?”

But she was also taken aback by how the list was stripped of context. “The thing that struck me the most and stopped me and catalysed this project was the fact that it felt very empty. It felt like they had this sort of clickbait list here of objects that police had mistaken as guns but they were missing all of the vital information.

“They were missing race and ethnicity and age and mental disability. Very quickly, I felt really angry. I felt, why would they publish something like this without any of this information? Colloquially, culturally, we can draw our own conclusion, but it just felt shortsighted, insensitive and rather heartless and crude.”

It produced an artistic response from deep within. “Often my work comes from a problem that I can’t reconcile, that I’m working over in my head, like, how do I understand this? For me, it was I don’t understand how anybody could have ever mistaken any of these objects as a gun. So I thought if I could slow myself down and understand the objects and recreate them in my studio, make these objects very diligently and slowly through the woodcarving process, maybe then I could understand how somebody could possibly make this mistake.”

Levine, who grew up in a progressive household with activist parents, also used the time to “re-educate” herself about race relations. “I wanted to devote it to a better, deeper understanding. So I started listening to rhetoric and essays and history novels centred on the history of race in the United States.”

So far she has meticulously carved 16 objects from the 23 on Harper’s list, describing each as an act of prayer, respect and remembrance. Her most recent stems from an incident in 2016 when a Miami police officer claimed that he thought a toy truck in the possession of Arnaldo Rios Soto, a man with autism, was a firearm. The officer opened fire but accidentally hit Soto’s caregiver, Charles Kinsey, who survived.

For Levine, who has spent years working in the developmental disability arts community, the case resonated. “The fragility of adults with disability in our society just can’t be overstated. We gloss over the fact that police, as far as I can tell, are not trained to recognise neurodiversity or any difference in ability: mental, emotional, developmental, physical.

“There’s a person on the list who is deaf and was shot and there’s a person on the list who had a bipolar disorder and was having an episode. Police again and again are responding with brutal, fatal, mortal violence to people who are living with disability and that’s particularly poignant for me.”

Would she like to meet any of the people connected to these objects’ stories? “I would love to. That’s always been a part of the project that is like an open question that I’m very eager to delve into.”

The project also developed into public events, often co-led with community activists and artists and including dialogues on race. Levine typically brings a bag of objects that police have mistaken for guns (the project is now aware of 40) that participants examine and recreate in clay. Nearly 300 of these handmade ceramics are displayed in the current exhibition.

“I chose clay because for me, clay is the everyman material. You don’t need to know anything to know how to work with clay: it’s dirt and water and you have your hands and you’re good. This kind of touching of material and sitting around a table, working together, automatically drops people into a more embodied experience that opens up a different kind of dialogue.”

Then came this summer’s police killing of George Floyd, an African American man in Minneapolis, and a nationwide reckoning over police brutality and racial injustice. Levine reflects: “It felt like a tidal wave. I was in the streets and was very turned up by the energy and continue to be hopeful that this will create actual institutional and systemic change in as many places as possible.

“My question, and I think the question of a lot of activists is, OK, so what do we do with this energy and where is it going to go and how do we keep it moving forward? In some ways the book arrived at a time when people are more open to hearing this story and I think that is good. It’s a story that needs to be told and it’s a story that we need to work through as a society and a community.”

The Black Lives Matter protests offered a particular challenge to white liberals to examine how they can be constructive allies without performative virtue signalling. When to speak out, when to fall silent so that others can speak? It is an issue that Levine, who is relieved by Donald Trump’s election defeat, is keenly aware of.

“I do think it’s a great time for white liberals to take stock of the privileges that you live with and familiarise yourself with the different Americas that are being lived in by marginalised people, both people of colour and then also on a socioeconomic level,” she says.

“As a white ally, I definitely try to step up and do the work of – what I’m now trying to use the language – ‘calling in’ other white people who I witnessed firsthand performing micro-aggressions or macro-aggressions and use my privilege to open a dialogue and create some awareness.”

Humility is essential, Levine adds. “I will continue to make mistakes as the steward of this project, and I have come to rely on my close relationships to guide me from a place of vulnerability and honesty and authenticity around how to continue to move forward and do this the best way that I can.”