image by Ashley Randall, 2023
Cara Levine is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA, holding a BFA from the University of Michigan (2007) and an MFA from California College of the Arts (2012). Her practice is a methodology for working with and integrating the ubiquity of loss in our lives and to cultivate grief’s equal and opposite force, love, through the belief that artwork helps us grapple with what are otherwise irreconcilable realities of suffering and injustice. Her work facilitates individuals and groups to bypass their intellect and tap into an embodied experience of living through a multilayered practice encompassing studio, collaborative, and within broader community engagement.
Following the loss of her childhood home in the 2025 Palisades Fire, Levine founded the ongoing project Silverlinings, which uses collective making to honor the grief of fire survivors. 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 exhibited globally in one-person, group exhibitions, and participatory events in venues such as the The Oregon Jewish Museum, Portland, OR, (2025-2026), 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 numerous residencies including, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles, CA (2020), 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 others. She was an inaugural recipient of the Cultural Leadership Fellowship at the Mandel Institute (2023-2025). Levine has also worked with the disability arts community since 2011 in roles at various progressive art studios including the ECF, Inglewood, CA and Creative Growth, Oakland, CA. She organized the first annual Self-Taught Artists Fair with Public Annex in Portland, OR in 2017.
She is currently an Associate Adjunct Professor at Otis College of Art and Design and a Lucas Arts Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center (2024-2027).
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