AUSTIN, Texas – Inside an Austin art gallery are snapshots of innocence and grief — and a call for awareness.
“I don’t think we realized the sadness that everybody is carrying with them, and looking at these pictures you see, you see a different side of them,“ said Veronica Mata, whose daughter, Tess, was killed at Robb Elementary. ”You see that hurt. That pain.”
“77 Minutes in Their Shoes” is an exhibit at the Canopy Projects Gallery in Austin. Each image captures the shoes victims of the Robb Elementary shooting wore on May 24, 2022, as well as a vest belonging to teacher Eva Mireles. The victims’ loved ones are photographed holding them.
“They’re small. They’re different sizes,” said Kim Rubio, whose daughter, Lexi, was killed in the shooting. Rubio said she was only given one of her daughter’s shoes.
“It takes your breath away,” Mata said.
Rubio, Mata and Gloria Cazares are part of a Uvalde nonprofit called Lives Robbed. The organization aims to raise gun violence awareness.
The nonprofit asked artist Sarah Sudhoff to take on the project.
″How could I not?" Sudhoff told KSAT. “I am not in their shoes, but how easily I could be. How easily any of us could be.”
The exhibit’s name references the amount of time it took for law enforcement to stop the gunman.
“For me, it’s the families — the 77 minutes that they went through,” said Sudhoff.
The photos — and the process to capture them — are intimate and vulnerable.
“I thought about… ‘What was [Tess} thinking about?“ said Mata. ”‘Was she scared?’ It was, just, all those things. It took us back to that day.”
Everything about how the portraits are displayed in the gallery is intentional, ranging from the placement of the photos to the frames around them.
“The families are on fabric,” Sudhoff said. “They are constantly evolving. Their journey is not over. Their story is continuing.”
As for the victims, their photographed items are printed and surrounded by a pine frame, referencing the boxes their items are stored in and the coffins they lay in.
“Their story — their story continues,“ Sudhoff said. ”But their journey is over."
Seeing the images and the meaning behind each one is a heartbreaking reality to confront.
“It’s harder to bury your child,” said Rubio.
“I think they need to feel the (sic) uncomfortable,” Cazares said.
“And if we can sit here — and we can do this — you can walk through a door just to look at a picture. Look at the shoes. Look at the faces.” Mata said.
The three mothers hope people from all backgrounds visit the exhibit and ask them about who their daughters were.
“If this doesn’t make you think differently, I don’t know what else will,” Mata said. “Unless it happens to them.”
The exhibit will be on display beginning Friday and running through Jan. 19 in Austin.
