Art Show Memorializing Lewiston Shootings Features Bowdoin’s Michael Kolster

No other Deaf community in US has been so traumatized by a single mass shooting. Two years later, the disproportionate impact of this tragedy on that community is being memorialized in a new exhibition at the University of New England.

Unspoken Resilience celebrates Maine’s Deaf community through a group exhibition of work by Deaf artists and craftspeople. One of the highlighted themes is the importance of American Sign Language and the role played by ASL interpreters.

Featured alongside these works as part of the exhibition is a recent series of color photographs of downtown Lewiston taken by Professor of Art Michael Kolster.

“It’s an honor to have this opportunity to connect with this community of artists on such a meaningful occasion,” said Kolster. “For my photographs to share exhibition space with such contrasting art works from a range of different media makes for some interesting conversations.”

Kolster, a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow whose photography has been featured in exhibitions across the US and Europe, has been taking photographs of downtown Lewiston for the past four years in order to acquaint himself better with Maine’s second largest city. “It is a quick trip from my studio in Lisbon Falls, and I enjoy being surrounded by its tall buildings,” observed Kolster. “I also like how its smaller downtown has me returning over and again to the same spots to watch them change.”

According to a UNE press release: “Unspoken Resilience offers a place of healing, recognition, and learning, both centering the enduring creativity of the Deaf community… and uplifting Lewiston in Kolster’s sensitive, luminous cityscapes.” 

Unspoken Resilience: Healing from the Lewiston Shooting Two Years In, will be on display at UNE’s Portland campus until February 8, 2026.