Rachel Owens

ZieherSmith has staged five solo shows with critically acclaimed sculptor Rachel Owens since 2005 and assisted in facilitating monumental projects with museums and public spaces internationally. Engaged in broad fields of practice from public art and traditional gallery work to activist based Community Theater, Owens tackles issues of hierarchical social conditions, environmental destruction, consumption and the points where these things intersect. Working sculpturally, performatively and socially, she uses material as meaning: what the sculpture is made of- is what the sculpture means- is what the sculpture does. Bottle shards, cardboard, coal, cut up humvees, and the dust of marble are all used to convey meaning, emotion, and action as they take on forms from porch to iceberg. Often with jobs beyond metaphor, the sculptures become stages, public seating, centers for protest and elevated vantage points. The New Yorker stated “There's an undeniable sweetness to Owens's work, even when she tackles earnestly political subjects.”

Owens has been included in exhibitions both in the US and internationally including The X Krasnoyarsk Biennial, RU; Austrian Cultural Forum, NY; The Frist Museum, TN;  Socrates Sculpture Park, LIC; and the New Museum Window, NY among others.  Her solo museum project, The Hypogean Tip commissioned for The Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport CT subsequently traveled to The Sugarhill Museum in NYC.  She has had reviews and inclusion in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Modern Painters, Flash Art and Triple Canopy Anthology and she has received grants from the Joan Mitchell, Pollack Krasner, and Harpo Foundations as well as a Cultural Humanitarian Grant from the US Consulate. 

Two artist presentation, Untitled Miami Beach, 2023

Solo Show: Mother, 2017