The 713,000 tiny white flags gently blowing in the breeze at the foot of the Washington Monument, revealed a truly realistic sense of the scale of lives lost during the recent Covid-19 pandemic. The installation opened on September 17thand just closed on October 3rd, 2021. Created by artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, and installed on 20 acres of the National Mall, it was titled In America: Remember. The large scale of all the flags carefully aligned and set in the ground in perfectly straight rows, was meant to draw attention to those who have died of Covid-19.
While on a trip to Washington DC, I visited the installation twice. On two different days the total number of deaths on a large billboard at the entrance changed by hundreds. There is no more graphic portrayal of this American tragedy than being surrounded by a sea of white flags, each memorializing one human being. When the sun shone the flags sparkled like stars. It felt as if the spirits of all those gone were there. The flags surrounding the perimeter of the various sections had names and messages on them left by loved ones but most did not.
Firstenberg uses art to focus on social issues in the world. Having spent many years as a hospice volunteer, she took art classes later in life and found she had talent and liked it. For her, art was a way to focus on getting across a particular message. While she had experience with smaller installations using flags, this year, she felt that so many deaths from Covid happened in isolation that she needed to bring acknowledgement to them. She obtained permission to use the most central place in the nation’s capital…the National Mall. She planned and ordered more than 700,000 flags, and with the help of volunteers her vision became a reality.
During my second visit, the day before the installation was taken down, I stood with my 7-year old grandson gazing across the sea of flags imagining how he might remember this sad moment in US history when he is old. At first he stood next to me gazing in awe across the landscape of flags, until his childlike joy of walking up and down rows and lying down amongst the flags reminded me that he is still only 7 years old.
https://suzannefirstenberg.com/artist-bio-suzanne-firstenberg/
