From now until September 14, visitors to the Health Museum will encounter exhibits like Body Worlds 101, to learn about human anatomy, and the discarded sculptures of Reclaimed Creations. But among the typical installations one would expect at this institution, they will also find 77 Minutes.

This photo installation by Sarah Sudhoff, a Houston-based Cuban American interdisciplinary artist, features still life photographs and portraits of individuals and families whose lives were impacted by the Robb Elementary School shooting that occurred on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. The tragedy left 19 children and two teachers dead, and an additional 17 people sustained injuries. 

The reason this photo exhibition found its home at this particular museum? Guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States, and Health Museum leadership wanted to highlight how gun violence is a reality tied to social and emotional health. And the epidemic doesn't stop there. According to data from Everytown Research and Policy, 125 people in the United States are killed by guns every day, with twice as many getting shot and wounded.

“As an artist and mother of two school-aged children, I feel compelled to continue responding to these atrocities and lack of action through art and activism because gun violence devastates all people at personal, community, state, and national levels,” Sudhoff says. 

The installation’s name, 77 Minutes, refers to the amount of time Robb Elementary students and teachers waited for help, as families yearned for updates about those trapped inside. The exhibition features floating pine boxes holding framed photographs of the shoes the young victims were wearing at the time of their deaths, paired with black and white portraits of their families holding them. These were the only items returned to them following the investigation.

But highlighting the gun violence epidemic isn’t exactly new for Sudhoff, who started her career as an online photo editor and journalist at Time, covering significant historical events including the Oklahoma City bombing anniversary and September 11 terrorist attacks. She eventually moved to Austin in 2007 to work with Texas Monthly after leaving her Time job and attending graduate school at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Sudhoff first started highlighting the issue shortly after hearing about the Uvalde shooting. At the time, she was working at an artist residency in North Carolina. 

“I felt called to explore this topic because it kept showing up in my life,” Sudhoff says. “My daughter was the same age [as many of the children in Uvalde]; my children were born in San Antonio. It wasn’t my community, but the adjacent community to where my children were born.”

She is also an advocate and volunteer for Moms Demand Action, a movement fighting for public safety measures to protect people from gun violence. Her earlier creative works include a multifaceted project called Not a Drill, where she aims to explore Americans’ increased exposure to gun violence with a specific focus on school shootings and the alarming lack of measurable gun reform in the US.

“Using every day, child-centered materials such as paper, ink, felt, blankets, and plastic, paired with art texts that read like headlines or protest slogans, I open up visceral conversations about the fragility of life,” Sudhoff says. “In doing so, I arm individuals and communities with resources, solidarity, and a voice rather than weapons.”

For Not a Drill, she initially photographed her children in emergency blankets and then produced an installation displayed at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston. She screen printed stars onto red mylar emergency blankets and draped them over the pews, similar the way they’re placed over coffins in a military funeral (Sudhoff herself grew up in a military family). This installation was then featured at Austin’s Canopy artist collective for the first anniversary of the Uvalde shooting called Vigil for the 21. This component has continued traveling. The Not a Drill series was also used to honor the victims of the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting. Victims include eight students and two teachers who were fatally shot, and 13 others who were left wounded. Sudhoff staged a performance two miles from the school, where she dipped red flags in black dye to carry out a concept titled Theater of War.

Sudhoff actively fosters relationships with community members in both Uvalde and Santa Fe. Since key elements of 77 Minutes include navigating resiliency, anger, and grief, it was important for her to produce a project that surviving family members could collaborate on to share their stories in a respectful and meaningful way. Her journalism background informed how she approached the project with sensitivity for what these individuals have gone through.

“One example with 77 Minutes was with April, who was Makenna’s mom, who said [she] didn’t want her head and face shown in the photographs,” Sudhoff said.  “I almost said to her, ‘But everybody else has,’ but [decided] nope; that’s what the artist would say, and the journalist would say OK. I swallowed that comment and it was a memorable moment in terms of really allowing them to show me what they wanted to show me.”

With 77 Minutes, which was originally exhibited in Austin and serves as a companion piece to Not a Drill, the children’s parents were the ones who came up with the idea of featuring and including the shoes as the focal point of the project. Sudhoff’s goal was to have the audience interact with the pieces and be confronted by the families.

“Hopefully in future installations, the photographs [which are printed on sheer fabric] will be hung lower down so that when you’re in the space, if you go with somebody or not, you’ll be able to see other people walking around them, and you'll be able to see someone’s silhouette through one of the panels,” Sudhoff says. “That was a conceptual decision that I made, that I wanted you to feel like you were not only engaged in the installation, but also part of the installation and part of the conversation.”