MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — A new exhibit that creatively addresses gun violence is now on display at Hennepin County's Minneapolis Central Library.
Artists are taking decommissioned weapons from Twin Cities gun buyback events and transforming them as a way to talk about gun violence.
"How can I use my art to change the masses?" asked Sean Garrison Phillips, known by the artist name seangarrison.
"There's millions of people who have been anesthetized and desensitized that they don't want to act until it's their kid or parent or whoever is gone. That's sickening to me," Phillips said.
seangarrison is one of more than 30 artists featured in the exhibit called "Art is my Weapon Vol.11 'Unburden Yourself.'"
His piece is titled "City of Fruit."
"The seed planted in America from the beginning has been this seed of violence," Phillips said. "You don't build a tomato plant and expect peaches to grow without pulling up the roots, right? If you allow it to grow, it's going to grow."
The piece starts with bullet casings that represent each victim of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. It then leads to different buildings, represented by rifle butts. Each one addresses different mass shootings, from ones that have taken place at schools, to movie theaters and places of worship. Phillips said the bullets are the fruit. Fake blood flows throughout the piece, feeding the roots of the city.
"The streets are covered in blood in America," Phillips said. "No matter how many elementary kids get killed, no matter how many young boys or girls get killed in inner cities, no matter how many people kill via domestic violence, this place refuses to change when it has the power to."
He went on to say, "That's solely because if you plant violence, you get violence. If you don't pull it up at the root, what do you expect to happen? It's only going to get worse."
The nonprofit Art is my Weapon was started in 2015 as a way to use art as a catalyst for social change.
The organization partners with law enforcement, fire, hospitals, and other organizations working on violence prevention to raise awareness on gun violence.
"We host gun buybacks to hopefully get guns off the street and then law enforcement decommissions them into inoperable parts which usually end up being many, many, many parts. Then I pass them out to artists and they go ahead and create work in whatever their medium is," explained Nikki McComb, executive director.
They typically hold an exhibit like this every year but because of the pandemic, this is their first one involving gun parts since COVID.
"When the exhibits take place and people are just kind of tooling around, it offers an opportunity for people to have nonpartisan conversations around this issue and for people to really see and understand the impact of the issue on community," McComb said.
Seangarrison's work will be featured alongside the other artists now through May 27 at the Cargill Gallery on the second floor of Minneapolis Central Library.
"How can I use my art to change the masses?" Phillips asked. "We definitely have work to do."
Art is my Weapon: Unburden Yourself
Minneapolis Central Library, Cargill Gallery
April 6-May 27, 2023
Admission: Free
The library will host an artist reception on Sunday, April 23 from 3-4:30 p.m.
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