“Missing and Disappeared” brings to light the crisis of missing and unidentified women. Unlike the name, the exhibit is a space to honor the return of their stories.
The exhibit, showing until March 7, displayed 30 images of former Jane Does backlit in resin and surrounded by silhouettes, envelopes and vintage clothing patterns. Minneapolis-based artist Rachel Coyne wants to celebrate the DNA Doe Project’s identification of women who were missing and disappeared.
“These women are being returned to their families and returned to themselves in a sort of way,” Coyne said. “It’s a celebration of their names.”
Coyne stumbled upon the DNA Doe Project on Facebook around four years ago. The nonprofit aims to raise money and awareness for genetic genealogy to efficiently identify missing persons. The project inspired Coyne to create art.
Between the images of women, there are old family photographs set in resin. The places where women would be in the photos are cut out. Coyne casts every piece in resin to reflect the feelings of loved ones who lost someone.
“Something that family members say quite a bit is, ‘When I lost my loved one, it feels like we’re all frozen in time,’” Coyne said. “There’s just this sense of being stuck.”
A projector beams in the center of the gallery and reads, “A red shell blouse, flowered blue slacks, female undergarments, and black Italian-made wedge shoes were found with her remains.”
Around the projector, there are more silhouettes of women in resin with scraps of clothing patterns representing how the remains of the women were found. Coyne wanted to emphasize how law enforcement used to describe Jane Does by their clothing.
The light shining on each piece not only represents the women’s story but also hope for the continued progression of DNA technology. Ten years from now, Coyne hopes there are no more Jane Does.
Teagan Londo, a building arts student lead at Student Unions and Activities, came up with the idea to make the gallery space dimly lit. The portraits of the women are illuminated in the space.
“It’s meant to symbolize how these women’s families were left in the dark, because for so long, they didn’t know what happened to them, and how they were found,” Londo said.
Shannon Chambers, a student gallery attendant, said the nature and message of the exhibit resonates with a lot of women. To Chambers, we’re all aware of the commonality of women disappearing.
“It’s something we can all feel,” Chambers said.
There are roughly 13,000 unidentified persons in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, according to the gallery posting on the Student Unions and Activities page. Coyne found too many of them were women. Additionally, the DNA Doe database lacked identifications of women of color, Coyne said.
“I also wanted to emphasize that the DNA database has its own shortcomings,” Coyne said. “It’s a little light on identifying women of color, particularly indigenous women.”
Coyne focused on women who reflected key issues in this crisis in her artwork.
For example, Melody Harrison represents the issue older DNA technology had identifying race. The race of Harrison, formerly known as Apache Junction Jane Doe, was misclassified.
“Often people were found in a state of decomposition,” Coyne said. “If (law enforcement) really couldn’t tell what race the person was, they would enter them as white just as default.”
When deciding on artists to showcase, Coyne’s application for an exhibit on campus stood out to Londo.
“We promote a lot of stories that are underrepresented, and these women were actively being forgotten from history,” Londo said.
The exhibit promotes GEDmatch, where anyone can upload a DNA file used in ancestry genetic testing programs. The files are used by volunteers who help identify Jane Doe’s.
After the artist talk and reception on Jan. 23, Chambers said the gallery has gotten a lot of positive feedback.
