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. Exhibitions of note include a solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art inclusion in the 18th International Textile Triennial at the Central Textile Museum in Lodz Poland, an exhibition at Timeless Textiles Gallery in New South Wales, Australia and in 2024 she was invited to participate in the 15th Havana Biennale in Havana, Cuba. 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, Ucross, Ox-Bow, Willapa Bay AiR and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Rachel received a McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists in 2024, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in 2019 and has received five Minnesota State Arts Board grants. Rachel holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota and a BA from The Evergreen State College. She lives in Minneapolis, MN and 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 Department of Fine Arts.
Image from Ucross Residency 2026 image credit Carl Largent