New art exhibit honors Robb Elementary shooting victims

When authorities were trying to identify the victims of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, many of the children could only be identified by the shoes they were wearing that day.

"How often do you take your child to school and not pay attention to what they're wearing that day?" Kimberly Rubio, mother of victim Alexandria "Lexi" Rubio, said to ABC News.

A new exhibit titled "77 Minutes in Their Shoes" underscores this question to raise gun violence awareness while honoring the 21 victims of the Uvalde mass shooting on May 24, 2022. The exhibit, which runs Jan. 10 to Jan. 19 at the Canopy Projects Gallery in Austin, is a collaboration between Houston artist Sarah Sudhoff and Lives Robbed, a gun violence prevention non-profit created by families of the children killed in the Uvalde mass shooting.

"I thought, 'What are children wearing when they're gunned down in schools? And how do we bring this to the attention of Americans?' And so that's kind of how the idea was born," Rubio, who is also president of Lives Robbed, said.

The "77 Minutes" in the exhibit's name refers to how long the gunman was in the school before police confronted him and ended the massacre.

Sudhoff, a Cuban American artist whose work often merges themes of motherhood and gender with social issues like gun violence and domestic violence, told ABC News that the exhibit was partly influenced by others showcasing the clothing women wore on the night they were sexually assaulted.

However, in this exhibit, photographs of the shoes and portraits of family members with the shoes will be on display. Thirteen of the 21 families participated in the exhibit and all photographs were shot by Sudhoff.

The photographer said she chose to print the images on sheer fabric hanging from the ceiling so that the public can experience the portraits in a more direct manner.

"These portraits are on fabric, and they are thin and you can see through them and maybe you'll see somebody else through them," Sudhoff said.

She added, "I intentionally did not make them rigid, I did not make them hard, I wanted you to see the public through them, I wanted them to move because these families are still evolving, they're on an endless journey, they're on this unfortunate, heartbreaking journey, and they're constantly moving and shifting and morphing."

Although "77 Minutes in Their Shoes" honors the victims of the mass shooting, Rubio said creating the exhibit still posed moments that were emotionally challenging.

"The hardest part was when we took the photos at Robb Elementary featuring the three moms [Rubio, Veronica Mata, and Gloria Cazares] and our girls' shoes," Rubio said. "That was difficult—to be back at Robb, to think about taking them to school that morning and the shoes they were wearing, walking into that school and never walking back out."

The exhibit's opening weekend also includes panels tackling topics such as gun violence prevention, legislation, art activism, and grief. Arnulfo "Arnie" Reyes, who taught at Robb Elementary School and was the sole survivor of classroom 111, is speaking on a panel titled "The Classroom After Tragedy" to talk about his former students and his recovery.

"It's always important for me to be one of the voices that supports this and speaks on behalf of the students that are no longer here … I might have a little bit more of an impact just because I was there," Reyes said to ABC News.

Reyes said he tries to spread awareness and support the families of the victims every opportunity he gets, and he hopes that by participating in the exhibit, that he can continue to advocate for his students and inspire change.

"I would like for people to come with an open mind to see the shoes, to see this is all they have left," Reyes said. "Something that I said from the beginning is that I would try to do anything that I can do to not let these babies die in vain, and I hope that people join me in that journey to not let anybody else die in vain and to change things."