Rachel Rabhan is a visual artist originally from NYC and now residing in Franklin, TN. She is the former Director of the Arts Department at Ramaz High School where she worked for 26 years. She has led and founded innumerable community wide collaborative practices and practicum on the art making process, and views teaching as an embodied part of her creative practice. With a foundation in photography and painting, her visual art work is interdisciplinary and collaborative. Working with people and their individual narratives, she layers diverse contemporary experiences under the veil of historical events and concepts of communal identity. She views her work as giving voice to the various lenses through which people perceive the world and gain knowledge.
Education
MFA, Photography, Video and Related Media, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, 2006
Awarded SVA Graduate Assistantship
BS, Double Major, Studio Art/Art History, New York University, New York, NY, 1997
Awards
Aaron Siskind Memorial Scholarship, Fall 2005
Exhibitions
2020 The Color of Water: A Photographic Installation, Countee Cullen Library, Harlem, NY, January
2008 Freeway Balconies, Curated by Collier Schorr, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany, July
Play, Curated by Margot Herster, Flexspace, Austin, TX, November
2006 Postpartum, Curated by Richard Brooks, Visual Arts Gallery, NY, NY, July
The Early Work, Curated by Marvin Heiferman, Visual Arts Gallery, NY, NY, June
2004 The Colors of Love, Curated by Walter Kellery, SCALO Gallery, NY, NY, October
Publications - Visual Journalism & Monographs
Social Photography: Photographic Practices in the Context of Social Media, Sarah Schorr, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, 2017
The Deutsche Guggenheim 15th Anniversary Publication, November 2012
Freeway Balconies, Collier Schorr, ed., texts by Nancy Spector, Dominic Eichler, Sarah Lewis, Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2008
The Berlin Journal, A magazine of the American Academy in Berlin, 2008
The Newspaper Graffiti Event, GOOD Magazine, 2007
Lectures & Presentations
2010 School of Visual Arts, Visiting Artist for Photography II, Fall
2009 School of Visual Arts, Online Bookmaking Course, Nov 6
Creative Collaborations
Bureau of Change, New Orleans, LA – Creative consultant, artist and educator, 2012 and 2015-2018
Aesthetics of New Media, by Sarah Schorr, PhD., Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark – Artist 2016-2017
Twenty Summers, Provincetown, MA – Creative Consultant, 2014-2016
Ford Foundation, NY, NY – Producer, Photographer, USA Fellows Celebrations, 2010
Urban Movement Design, Vancouver, Canada – Photographer, Winter Olympics, 2009
Eldridge Street Project, NY, NY – Contributor, 2004 - 2008
GOOD Magazine – Photographer, The Newspaper Graffiti Event, 2007
CR Magazine – Author, “My Father’s Hand in Mine: A Photographer Holds on to Her Father’s Memory”, Fall 2006
218-RP-2 | A Social Practice PARTnership
218-RP-2 is Rebecca Pristoop and Rachel Rabhan. Our collaborative work encompasses social practice, lens-based exchanges, performance, and pedagogy. It is transparent, accessible and meant to create connection. Launched in 2017 with the Ramaz Mural Project, our mission solidified in 2018 with Los Muros de Mexico, which also made manifest our name. 218-rp-2
The Hitch Hike, Cold Spring, NY - 2020
Perpetual Care, Various cemeteries throughout New York City - 2020–ongoing
Los Muros de Mexico, Mexico, New York, Instagram 2018–ongoing
Defining Space, Mexico, New York, Instagram - 2018–ongoing
Ramaz Mural Project, Ramaz Upper School, NY - 2017–ongoing
Making and Being, NY, NY- Contributing member of the pedagogy group. Building tool kits to support the work Making and Being: a Guide to Embodiment, Collaboration, and Circulation in the Visual Arts, 2020-ongoing
Broadcast
“The Future of Medicine: Images of Alzheimer’s, Oregon PBS September 2006
