Statement
I am a maker, who unmakes and remakes with the aim of dismantling entrenched ways of seeing and believing. I am interested in the creative possibilities of the sewing machine, which I use to draw, create installations, and initiate socially engaged public projects. My process is iterative, investigative, research-based, and activist oriented. In undoing seams and re-making connections with sewing, I divert sewing’s original purpose of creating and mending toward social critique. Through these acts, I aim to create projects and spaces for cultivating deeper understandings of labor rights, solidarity and collective power.
I reveal, viscerally and poetically, how the clothes we wear are a material connection with the workers, around the globe, who make them. I work with used textiles because of their material potency and the way they reference the scale of the many crises caused by capitalism – climate change, racism and labor abuse. Creating installations with used clothes also embeds a range of histories – both those of workers and those of wearers – into my work, raising essential questions about how garments are discarded and the impacts of overproduction on our climate. This “invites” the public to see themselves in my work. I often exhibit wall drawings and installations together and present public engagement projects in conjunction with my work as well, layering meanings and processes.
My interest in labor rights stems from histories of Jewish activism in the garment industry and also my own family’s history as immigrants. My focus on people who sew garments visually emphasizes we are part of a global community.
Biography
Rachel Breen’s work has been shown widely across the country and internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Most recently, Rachel was invited to participate in the 15th Bienal De La Habana in Havana, Cuba in 2024. Rachel was awarded a Fulbright – Nehru Senior Scholar research fellowship, hosted by the Indian Institute of Craft and Design in Jaipur, India in 2022. Rachel has been awarded artist residencies at MacDowell, Willapa Bay AiR and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Rachel is a recipient of a McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists in 2024 and was an inaugural recipient of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in 2019. She has received five Minnesota State Arts Board grants and a fellowship from the Walker Art Center Open Field. Her solo exhibition, The Price of Our Clothes,” which took place at the Perlman Museum, was Included in the top 20, best of 2018, exhibitions in the US by Hyperallergic (December 20, 2018). Rachel holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota and a BA from The Evergreen State College. She lives in Minneapolis, MN, maintains an active studio practice. Rachel is a tenured professor of art at Anoka Ramsey Community College and currently serves as the chair of the Dept. of Visual Arts.
