LAST LOOK
Evy Mages
The Message, Not the Medium 2021 Rubenstein Guest Artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg explores the pandemic, empathy, and thousands of unfinished stories. “In my art, you will see a theme,” said Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, the 2020/21 Sidwell Friends guest artist at the School’s Rubenstein Guest Artist Lecture in May. “I take on topics where there has been a lot of discussion, but very little movement.” Perhaps no issue epitomized that theme so precisely as COVID-19, which ravaged the nation while the previous White House fumbled its reaction. In response, Firstenberg created In America: How could this happen…, an instantly iconic installment in the DC Armory featuring more than a quarter of a million small white flags— each representing a coronavirus death. “I wanted to use art to explain to people the real depth and breadth of this tragedy,” Firstenberg said. “The number of deaths in America got so extreme that people were ignoring it in a way.” The 270,000-plus flags, she said, each represent “unfinished stories.” She chose the flags for their movement and color: “The flags, when they ripple, it is the only movement, and there’s beauty in that. But on the whole, when 84 SIDWELL FRIENDS MAGAZINE | SUMMER 2021
you look at this immense field, that white really looks like what it is: the flag of surrender.” Of course, even a quarter-million flags couldn’t keep pace with the pandemic. So Firstenberg partnered with George Washington University to create a digitized, geolocated version of the installment. Now, Americans everywhere can “visit” the flags and even add their own. Firstenberg has worked across a spectrum of critical issues, from addiction to immigration. In doing so, she has used clay, bronze, wood, sharpies, flags, and even ice to express herself. “You will not recognize my art visually,” she said. “You will feel it viscerally.” Sidwell Friends Middle Schoolers had a chance to experience that for themselves during a virtual field trip to Firstenberg’s huge Bethesda studio. She started out by asking the class who among them were artists. But before the students could answer, Firstenberg said: “You should all have your hands raised. You are all artists. Everyone has an artist on the inside.”
