CARVE: THE MYSTIC IS NOURISHED FROM THIS SPHERE

Bass wood, plywood, mixed media

2023

Carve is a participatory sculpture commissioned by the Contemporary Jewish Museum for Levine’s exhibition, Cara Levine: To Survive I Need You To Survive. Levine continued to add carvings to this vessel through the run of the exhibition (Feb-July 2023), as well as curate programs under the collective title, Carve: Seven Days of Collective Care (July 9-16). More information below.

Images by Impart Photography, Max Gavrich and Levine, please inquire for details.

In August 2021, Levine invited colleagues, friends, and strangers to join her in the exercise of digging a hole. In the wake of recent and ongoing traumas, including the COVID-19 pandemic, egregious acts of police brutality, and the impacts of climate change, the simple exercise of digging a hole offered catharsis and an opportunity to grieve together after many months in isolation. Represented in the gallery through video documentation, the weeklong project, titled DIG: A Hole to Put Your Grief In, provided the groundwork for Levine’s methodology of gathering people around a vessel made to contain grief, offer a site for ritual, and hold space for reflection. 

Carve; The Mystic is Nourished From This Sphere continues this methodology in a new site-specific work created for The CJM. In both artworks, Levine invites participants to contribute by sharing notes about the grief they may be experiencing in their own lives—be it the loss of loved one, or more abstract forms of grief like the experiences of loss that come with aging, watching children grow, the end of a friendship or romantic relationship, the destruction of a habitat, or a missed opportunity. In Carve, visitors’ grief notes are engraved on the surface of the constructed hole. As the carvings accumulate over the course of the exhibition, the artwork increasingly represents the strength and compassion that come with the understanding that no one is truly alone in their grief.  

The work’s title refers to the Zohar, the primary text of the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah. One of the foundational concepts in Kabbalah is that God, like humans, has traits, which are represented by spheres called sefirot (Hebrew for “emanations”). In Levine’s copy of the Zohar, inherited from her grandmother, one of the sefirot called chokmah (Hebrew for “wisdom”) is said to “nourish the mystic.” In Carve; The Mystic is Nourished From This Sphere, Levine implies that the act of holding another's grief nourishes one's mystical wisdom through empathy. 

In both DIG and Carve, the hole serves as a starting point for a symbolic adaptation of the ritual of shiva—the week-long mourning period in Judaism following the death of a loved one. Traditionally, during the seven days of shiva, community gathers to comfort the mourners. In the week leading up to the opening of this exhibition, Levine engaged in a seven-day ritual inspired by shiva in which she carved submitted notes of grief into the surface of the hole. Over the course of the exhibition, the artist will periodically return to The CJM to carve new notes contributed by visitors into the surface, making the artwork an ongoing site for collaboration.

Text from Cara Levine: To Survive I Need You To Survive at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, 2023

Carve: Seven Days For Collective Care, July 9 - 16, 2023

Join us for a week of programming at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, from July 9th to July 16th, to mark the final phase of community and artist activation of the "Cara Levine: To Survive I Need You To Survive" exhibition. The week will include a combination of public programs and private events centered around the artwork, Carve; The Mystic is Nourished from this Sphere and will engage themes of grief, healing, community, and interconnectedness. Led by a diverse range of participants throughout the week including the artists Heidi Quante and Alicia Scott of the Bureau of Linguistical Reality, spiritual community leader, Maggid Jhos Singer, artist and sound artist, Clare Hedin, and more. Cara Levine will also be present in the gallery carving everyday. The week will culminate in a public event at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, on Sunday, July 16th, where everyone is invited to join Cara in digging a hole for collective grief and in celebrating the close of this week long community effort. - excerpted from CJM website