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Many now also carry messages from across the country submitted on the project's website, messages to mothers, fathers, siblings and friends. Firstenberg said she hoped it could be cathartic for families not able to hold large funerals or be with family and other loved ones given pandemic restrictions.

\"PHOTO:
Patrick Semansky/AP
PHOTO: A worker plants white flags as part of artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg's temporary art installation, "In America: Remember," in remembrance of Americans who have died of COVID-19, on the National Mall in Washington, Sept. 15, 2021.
>

Some are to strangers, but fellow Americans.

She recalled one emergency room doctor who traveled to Washington from New York last fall to add the names of 12 patients he lost to COVID.

He then turned around, she said, heading back to start a new shift.

On the Washington National Mall today - remembering the US COVID deaths. A flag for every life lost. Flags as far as the eye can see... 😢#GetVaccinated pic.twitter.com/NEqlEw0EAl

— Martin Weiss (@martinoweiss) September 17, 2021

The exhibit is the largest participatory installation since the AIDS quilt was displayed on the National Mall in October 1987.

Firstenberg said she hopes the flags, and the sound of them being pulled in the wind, will give visitors \"a moment of pause.\"

\"This is all of our art,\" she said, \"because it's when people personalize flags and a complete stranger comes and meets that flag and feels something, senses the grief that is embodied by just that one flag, they created the art, too.\"

]/>

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