Fran Flaherty

is the creator and co-curator of Anthropology of Motherhood, and is the Director of the Joseph F. and Helen C. Dyer Arts Center at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf. As a first generation immigrant mother from the Philippines and a deaf artist, her work is centered on issues surrounding migrant family relations and assimilation, maternal feminism, disability aesthetics, and social work. Her work is inspired by the care paradigm—a premise that human beings cannot survive alone and the progress of human beings, as a species, flows from our identity as social animals. It is the prospect of this harmony that inspired her to create Anthropology of Motherhood, an ongoing project which elevates the act of care-giving through fine art by transforming mundane objects of caregiving into valuable art pieces such as paintings, sculpture, and mixed media pieces. She also transforms busy public spaces into immersive installations that serve as places of respite for young children and their caregivers and is a member of the #notwhite collective. Her work can be found at Smith College Art Museum, Dyers Art Center, Wyndhams Hotels and Resorts, and Carnegie Mellon University’s Archives.