What’s the value of human life?

The discussion of gun violence, feminism and sex emerged within the Human Rights Institute at Kean University. Linda Lighton’s exhibit titled, “Taking Aim: power, gender and firearms” highlights the effect of gun ownership as “an increasingly violent, deracinated and unstable” within American culture and how it has shaped the artist, as well as its influence upon our society.

Twenty two of the abstract ceramic pieces illustrates a visual presentation of the national debate on human rights versus the right to bear arms. While the public indulges in the persuasively seditious nature of the gallery, it is encouraged to build their own perception of what the elements of gun violence means to them.

One of Lightons visual presentations. Photo Courtesy of Tasha Dowbachuk.

Lighton creates her art through political advocacy with the hope to engage with her community in social commentary. Living and working in Kansas City, Missouri, her passionate concern for the progression of this country rests at the ideologies held on gun culture.

“In 2010 while driving through a busy intersection, just a block from my studio, my husband witnessed six guys with guns drawn and two people getting shot dead,” Lighton said in front of her viewers inside the gallery.

“So, I started looking into gun violence in Kansas City, which is where I’m from, and it was the fifth most violent city in the country with three murders a week. I felt responsible for my neighborhood and I wanted to make some kind of effects of change”

While shining a light upon domestic violence and the explicit nature of sex, one of her pieces states that, “over six thousand women were murdered by an intimate partner using a gun between the years 2001 and 2012, more than the total number of US troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined”.

Most pieces address the similarity in misogyny and unfettered consumption through the infatuation held for guns. One of her pieces titled, “Love and War: The Ammunition”, describes this concept as “the conflates the weapons used by men and women in love and war, and the ways that they look at protection and power differently”.

The exhibit explored various concepts and ideas of Lighton. Photo Courtesy of Tasha Dowbachuk.

Metaphorically, the belief explores the idea that women often use cosmetics to feel a sense of power, while men often conceive guns or bullets in a similar concept.

One of the informative blurbs inside the space details that, “Researchers estimate that gun violence costs the American economy at least $229 billion every year, including 8.6 billion in direct expenses”.

“We must learn to speak to our fellow citizens, even if we disagree with them. We have a responsibility to speak up to tragedies when no one else will,” Lighton said

“The most effective thing you can do, is keep the conversation alive.”