Multidisciplinary artist Rachel Leah Cohn’s new art show at the Form+Content Gallery, by her own admission, is very Jewish. But that exploration of her Judaism started in part, thanks to a five-year stay teaching in Doha, Qatar.
“At that time, I was working with young Arab women, working with them on stories about that culture,” said Cohn. “I spent so much time talking to others about representing their cultures, I wanted to think about representing Jewish culture.”
Now a professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., Cohn’s “To Rejoin the Ocean” is open at the North Loop gallery (210 2nd St. N. in Minneapolis), and there will be an opening reception on Saturday from 2-4 p.m.
The centerpiece of the show is a “kinetic sculpture” called Mem.
“It’s a fountain that represents Miriam’s well,” said Cohn. “It has lots of lamps and translucent paintings, giving the experience of being underwater in the well.”
Rachel Cohn’s “Air Becomes Water,” an etched copper bowl and radio, made in 2026 in collaboration with Natan Diacon-Furtado.
Mem started as a commissioned work by the Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis in 2024. Cohn’s work is coming to Minneapolis through her past connection with the ACRE Residency, an artist-run, community-driven organization that produces programs and initiatives. Form+Content works with artists part of the residency program.
In her artist’s statement, Cohn said the inspiration came from sitting in “a cold creek” at the ACRE Residence in Boscobel, Wis., in 2021.
“I was emerging from the isolation of the pandemic and deeply grateful to spend time each day in nature with new friends. Sitting in the water became a healing act, reconnecting us to our bodies, to one another, and to the landscape,” she wrote. “I came to understand the creek as a mikvah, a Jewish ritual bath: a site of cleansing, purification, and transformation. The physical sensation of cold water against my body offered an antidote to the loneliness of the previous year. Through ritual, the pool also connected me to an ancestral past and a long history of entering living waters and emerging renewed.”
Cohn grew up in a Jewish community outside of Boston and felt welcomed in Doha, where she was teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Qatar.
“I felt really comfortable there and have really close friends,” she said. “I saw how much shared culture there is in terms of tradition, how communities are formed and how they treat each other. At the same time, it was a little complicated because I couldn’t be openly Jewish.”
When the show for Mem first opened in April 2024 in Indianapolis, she said the timing was also a little complicated.
“It’s been really interesting because there was a lot of pressure because of Oct. 7, and we didn’t get to publicize it very much,” she said. “It wasn’t controversial work, but it was challenging timing. I thought it was going to be easier, and then it’s not what it seems.”
Cohn will also be giving an Artist’s Talk on the closing day of the exhibit, Saturday, March 28, 4-6 p.m.