Missing & Disappeared at Gallery 120

Rachel Coyne exhibition on view now through Friday, March 6, 2026

Missing & Disappeared, an exhibition by Rachel Coyne, is showing now through Friday, March 6, 2026, at Gallery 120. Art shows and exhibitions are hosted at the Gallery 120 brick-and-mortar location in the atrium of the Fine Arts building on the Inver Hills Community College campus in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota.

Rachel Coyne: Artist Statement

Missing & Disappeared is Rachel Coyne’s body of work centered around the crisis of missing and disappeared women in the United States. This work is composed panels of resin in which the artist has suspended a collage of paper materials from vintage clothing patterns. When a strong light is shone through the panels, multiple female silhouettes come into view, emerging from the shadows.

There around 14,000 unidentified decedents in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and all too many of them are women who went missing or were disappeared. Unidentified decedents are usually described by the clothes they are wearing, and sometimes named after them. For example, a Sarasota County “Jane Doe” is described as “wearing a multi-colored cotton pullover shirt with an Italian label.” Since many of the unidentified decedents are from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the vintage pattern envelopes used in Coyne’s work are contemporary to their lives.

The strong backlighting of the pieces reflect the hope of new DNA technologies. The images of women in this display are drawn from the DNA Doe Website. All of these women were former Jane Does, whose name was returned to them through DNA technologies, such as GEDmatch. GEDmatch allows any person who has participated in popular ancestry genetic testing programs to upload their DNA file into a database used by volunteers to identify Jane Does.

Read The Minnesota Daily story about Rachel Coyne’s exhibition

‘Missing and Disappeared’ exhibit shines light on Jane Does

The exhibit highlights the crisis of missing and disappeared women in the U.S. at the Larson Art Gallery in the St. Paul Student Center at the University.

by Isabella Caswell
Published February 12, 2025

WHAT: Missing & Disappeared

WHO: Rachel Coyne

WHEN: Now thru March 6, 2026

WHERE: Gallery 120

Fine Arts Building
Inver Hills Community College
2500 80th Street East
Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076
General: 651-450-3000
Gallery 120: 651-450-3101