Taking Aim: Power, Gender and Firearms
Taking Aim: Power, Gender and Firearms is both formally seductive and conceptually subversive. The violence that Linda Lighton references in this show is directly connected to a materialistic love of weaponry, its proliferation in homes across the United States, and a disconnection between easy trigger fingers and tragic consequences. Linda Lighton links gun violence to violence against women, and then connects both ideas to capitalist greed and the human preoccupation with power, control, and status.
Taking Aim is Lighton’s first exhibition that is directly and specifically about American culture and the impact of gun ownership across an increasingly violent, deracinated, and unstable society. The viewer is forced to become an unwitting participant in the dilemma that is at the heart of American culture today. We are attracted to violence and ashamed of our collusion in its prevalence. Linda Lighton has insight and conviction to make work that addresses the culture in which she lives. Through the repeated motifs of the gun, the flower and the bullet, Linda Lighton presents the viewer with a visual representation of the conflicted psyche at the heart of the national debate on human rights vs. the right to bear arms.
Linda Lighton is an artist, activist, mother, living and working in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. She makes her art in a large warehouse and is committed to being creatively prolific and politically engaged on a daily basis. She is a passionate advocate for the arts with a deep concern for her community.
Lighton has exhibited at museums and galleries domestically, and internationally. Her work is included in prestigious collections in China, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.
Tanya Hartman, curator