By Alyssa Marie Luciano
Sometimes, the voices we cannot hear speak the loudest.
It has been 36 years since a 20-year-old Filipina woman took her chance and traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States of America.
Being an immigrant became a challenge for her, taking the long way to study at the University of Pittsburgh, raised a family, and started a career.
This woman is Fran Ledonio Flaherty, who is known for never letting her degenerative hearing condition be a hindrance to chasing her dreams.
Coping with the bitter-sweet reality of the world, she founded Carnegie Mellon University’s Digital Arts Studio in 2010, and since 2014 has taught art at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf.
After 36 years, Fran already had the courage to take down every wall she built.
Following the 2016 US presidential elections, the artist considers anti-immigrant sentiments and attacks on Asian-Americans as the fuel for her eagerness to let other people be aware of her presence.
Just recently, she let her arts be heard by conducting a new art exhibit titled “Deaf Brown American Mom” which became her “visual diary of everything over the last five, six years.”
“It’s all about how do you survive as a deaf, brown immigrant woman and mother post-2016 election,” Flaherty told 90.5 WESA regarding her largest solo show ever which features more than 70 artworks in many media.
According to her website, the artist and educational consultant’s works are centered “n issues surrounding migrant family relations and assimilation, maternal feminism, & disability aesthetics that synthesizes traditional media and physical computing.”
Flaherty often uses her own experiences, as well as an inspiration for her art to let people know how she feels, especially in a community where she seems to be unaccepted.
The “Deaf Brown American Mom” exhibits the ways people with “invisible disabilities” are being treated in this generation.
A series of her text-based paintings also features comments from other people about her own disability, including one that reads, “You don’t look deaf”.
She also put her words into art as she fabricated tiny words from clear acrylic and scattered them around the gallery. Words that seem to scream the struggle of disabilities which cannot be seen by the naked eye such as depression, anxiety, and obsessive–compulsive disorder.
Flaherty aims to help in conversing a larger issue through her masterpieces in this exhibit at the SPACE gallery located at 812 Liberty Ave. from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. starting March 11.
Her exhibit also features a show-within-a-show titled “Lockdown”, which addresses racial justice issues, anti-mask and anti-vaccination protests, and the January 6, 2020 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol. – ag
