TO SURVIVE I NEED YOU TO SURVIVE
birch plywood, oak, rubber, leather, mixed media
5’x5’x5’
2020
I first heard the refrain, I need you to survive, sung in a gospel while attending an interfaith service at the First AME Church in Los Angeles with Temple Isiah, after an anti-semitic mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and the racist shooting of an elderly black couple in Kentucky outside a historic Black Church, the very same weekend, in 2018.
At the end of this deeply moving service, both congregations and choirs joined to sing the gospel by Hezekiah Walker, I Need a You To Survive. The refrain, repeated in the song’s chorus, spells out the most important truth: for me to survive, I need you to survive - this is the loop of interconnectivity. As Jewish people, queer people, people of color, and many other marginalized people know, we cannot come through oppression and hatred without direct action, care, and love from one other.
The work is constructed in a ring to highlight this interconnectedness. It also casts a shadow, highlighting that our darkness is also deeply apart of what makes us whole. This work was completed the day before my studio shut its doors due to COVID19, intended for an April 2020 LA exhibition, which, like nearly everything else was postponed 15 months.
Video captured in winter 2022 for Contemporary Jewish Museum exhibition, Cara Levine: To Survive I Need You To Survive.
Below images from original rooftop documentation at Bendix Building Downtown Los Angeles, 2018 and 2023 Contemporary Jewish Museum installation.
