Chloe Friedlein (BFA in Art Practice ‘19), winner of the prestigious 2019 Andries Deinum Prize for Visionaries and Provocateurs in the College of the Arts, this month unveils her “Dear America” project in an online gallery.
A survivor of the 2015 mass shooting on the Umpqua Community College campus in Roseburg, Friedlein embarked on the “Dear America” project with a plan to meet, photograph and learn the stories of gun-violence survivors from around the United States, and share their reflections in the form of letters to America. Although the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted some of her travel plans, she was able to connect with dozens of survivors both in person at a conference in Washington, DC in February 2020 and online.
The survivors’ letters and Friedlein’s photographs are on view at the project website, which shares survivors’ heartbreaking experiences, ranging from domestic violence to police brutality, suicide and mass shootings. Friedlein herself is one of the project’s participants, sharing her experience with her own “Dear America” letter.
On the morning of October 1, 2015, Chloe Friedlein sat in her biology class at Umpqua Community College. She had been given a part in the school’s fall play and was looking forward to her first reading with the cast that night. But when a student on campus shot and killed eight students and an assistant professor, sending her and her fellow students to hide in terror in a classroom closet, her life was forever changed.
“There are on average over 100,120 gun-related injuries and over 36,383 gun deaths every year,” she writes in the project’s introduction. “Countless others are left physically unharmed, but emotionally wounded in the aftermath.”
Everyone impacted by gun violence has a story to tell. Believing that “stories are what connect us and drive us as human beings,” Friedlein sought to find ways to connect with others who had also experienced the trauma of gun violence or lost a loved one to a gun. In the process, she discovered a way to embrace her own healing and that of others, promoting empathy and connectedness.
In the gallery, we meet nearly two dozen survivors and mourners, including Gina and Carmen, whose mother was killed by a felon who knocked on her door and shot her; Sharmaine, whose 23-year-old son was killed by a stray bullet in a street shooting; and Seth, who lost his brother, George, when a gunman shot him during a robbery. Although their stories are unique, their grief and pain unite them.
“My hope for this project is to create a platform for survivors to address their neighbors, to share with them—and with you—pieces of who they are and who they love, and to establish personal connections that transcend the politics surrounding guns in America,” Friedlein says.
“Dear America” is open to submissions from anyone who has experienced gun violence and would like to share their story. The gallery will evolve and grow as additional submissions are added, and the project will be on display in a public exhibition in the Broadway Gallery in Lincoln Hall in spring 2021 if public health guidelines allow.