Deaf Brown American Mom, an exhibit by Fran Ledonio Flaherty

Fran Ledonio Flaherty, a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines, has lived in Pittsburgh for 30 years. Flaherty is a teaching artist, and her work addresses the intersectionality of racism, disability, and motherhood. She is the founder of Anthropology of Motherhood an immersive art space that has been featured for several years now at the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival. This hybrid exhibition is innovatively designed as both an art space, an interactive amenity, and a place of respite for families with young children. She is also a member of the increasingly relevant art collective, #notwhite.

With over seventy artworks, Flaherty’s exhibition Deaf Brown American Mom provides a range of media such as silk prints, photographs, 3D prints, digital fabricated pieces, acrylic paintings to express her work of living in a post 2016 America. Within this show, there is a smaller exhibit called Lockdown. “COVID-19 put the challenges of 2016 on a different plane. I felt that my identity during the global pandemic was shaken even more. The struggles that we are used to, was felt ten-fold.” Included in this smaller exhibition are references to politically charged events such as several trials related to the Black Lives Matter movement, mask and vaccination protests, and the riots that took place on January 6, 2021 on the U.S. Capitol.