“Unspoken Resilience,” a multi-disciplinary exhibition on view at the University of New England (UNE) Gallery in Portland through February 7, assembles works of the Deaf community and its friends in the aftermath of a horrific 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. One-fifth of the shooting victims belonged to the Deaf community. This exhibition expresses its need to mourn, to console and to demand changes in the treatment of a population with recognizably distinct interpretive needs.
The show assumes an audience mostly ignorant of Deaf culture and its forms of communication. It is particularly directed to students at UNE entering the caring professions. The exhibition and materials spotlight the Deaf community’s visual sophistication and highly developed linguistic competence as well as how they differ from the expectations of the hearing, English-speaking public. Almost 1 million Americans are said to identify as culturally Deaf and to communicate primarily or solely through American Sign Language (ASL).
America’s propensity for mass gun violence was once more confirmed on October 25, 2023, when 18 people — four from Maine’s Deaf community —and 14 others were killed, with more wounded, at a Lewiston bowling alley and nearby bar. Thankfully, two years later, in November 2025, hard lobbying by families and friends of the victims convinced Maine voters to approve a “red-flag law,” which extends the right to family and household members in the state to petition a court for the temporary confiscation of lethal weapons from those posing a credible threat.
But the damage had already been done that night to the fabric of Maine’s tightly bound Deaf community. Already disproportionately affected, Deaf individuals were doubly injured when the services of live ASL interpreters were ignored, withheld and even barred from those deserving assistance by first responders, health authorities and the media. Traumatized in myriad ways by a lack of information, appropriate guidance and compassionate reassurance, many were left to themselves to sort out their experiences of pain, fear, terror, confusion and loss.