Without End: Recent Work on Grief by Cara Levine

Pearl District

When

Ongoing

Days vary, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

Cost: Starting at $10.00

Where

Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education

724 NW Davis St
Portland, OR 97209

Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Cara Levine explores themes of absence, empathy, and equity through a practice encompassing studio-based artmaking, social engagement, and curatorial projects. Levine’s art offers profound emotional resonance, inviting visitors into a contemplative space where loss, memory, and healing converge, and the sense of grief becomes tactile and visible. What does a memory look like? How do we touch what is no longer there? Can absence take form? These questions reverberate throughout the exhibition, asking us to consider the shape of a feeling, the weight of remembrance, and the possibility of connection after loss.

As part of this exhibition, she unveils Silverlinings, the inaugural presentation of a participatory, site-specific installation right within the museum’s space: an artistic meditation on grief inspired by the Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025, during which Levine lost her childhood home as well as the homes of several other family members. Utilizing sand to represent a boundless sense of the infinite, and a sandbox to contain all types of losses, including climate loss, Levine invites visitors to trace a drawing that represents loss in the sand. The act of kneeling at or bowing towards the sand evokes humility, ritual, and devotion, and offers potential for restoration and catharsis.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Judy Margles Education and Culture Fund and the Craig E. Wollner Exhibition Fund, which continue to make it possible to bring compelling contemporary art to our audiences.