Fran Flaherty

is a Deaf artist, curator, and educator practicing in Pittsburgh, PA, USA and Rochester, NY, USA. As a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines, her work is centered in issues surrounding migrant family relations and assimilation, maternal feminism, & disability aesthetics that synthesizes traditional media and physical computing. Flaherty is the founder of Anthropology of Motherhood, an ongoing curation of artwork and design that engages in the complex visual, material, emotional, corporeal and lived experiences of motherhood, care-giving, parenting, nurturing and maternal labor. She is also the Director of Dyer Arts Center for the Advancement of Deaf Culture at RIT/NTID, serves on the Advisory Board of the Office of Public Art in Pittsburgh, and is a proud member of the #notwhite collective.

“My 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, connected to one another through ties of love, kinship, and clanship. It is the prospect of this harmony that inspired me to create Anthropology of Motherhood, artworks of art that engage in the complex visual, material, emotional, corporeal, and lived experiences of motherhood, caregiving, parenting, nurturing, and maternal labor. I consistently apply the culture of care in my work, making space for those who cannot make space for themselves, in particular, am committed to improving the lives of people who are Deaf and/or Disabled by bringing disability awareness through my artwork.