09/10/2025
Save the date for this impactful event, co-curated by DRM Deaf Services Program Director, Michelle Ames.
Save the Date! 🩵 Opening Reception Thursday, September 25th, 5-7pm at the UNE Art Gallery Portland
Unspoken Resilience: Healing from the Lewiston Shooting Two Years In
Work by Artists of the Maine & National Deaf Communities and Photographs by Michael Kolster
Co-curated by Michelle Ames and Meryl Troop
September 25th 2025 - February 7 2026
Unspoken Resilience celebrates Maine’s Deaf community through a group exhibition of work by Deaf artists and craftspeople, in conversation with Michael Kolster’s recent series of color photographs of Lewiston. The exhibit foregrounds American Sign Language and issues of communication access, and recognizes ASL interpreters, who offer a linguistic and social bridge between the distinct cultures of Deaf individuals who use ASL and people who cannot sign. Co-curated with Michelle Ames and Meryl Troop, the show is a site of both remembrance and creative action.
Maine’s Deaf community is vibrant and bright, and was disproportionately impacted by the mass shooting in Lewiston on October 25th, 2023, which left 18 people dead and 13 injured. One of the deadliest mass shootings in US history, it is believed to be the only example in the country to impact the Deaf community so severely; over 20% of the victims were Deaf. The tragedy claimed the lives of four Deaf community members; wounded two; and traumatized many more, as in-person ASL interpretation services were withheld by authorities at hospitals and other official settings during the unfolding event. Unspoken Resilience offers a place of healing, recognition, and learning, both centering the enduring creativity of the Deaf community in the group of artworks curated by Ames and Troop, and uplifting Lewiston in Kolster’s sensitive, luminous cityscapes.
Reception is free, open to the public, and will be accompanied by two ASL interpreters
