Miriam Cahn

Miriam Cahn was born in 1949, in Basel, in a family of Jewish immigrants persecuted by the Nazi regime. She presently lives and works in Stampa. She graduated in graphic arts at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule, Basel, in 1975.

At that time, she involved herself for the first time in movements for feminism and peace, revealing a political conscience that will accompany her in her practice. Cahn uses various media, such as film, sculpture, drawing, aquarelles, photography, although painting is the main medium in the ensemble of her work. A great part of her paintings deal with the idea of the body, as a subjective place and a place of conflicts both social as well as familiar, violence, war, sexuality, death or “naked life”. In her most recent works, these questions have led to a pictorial treatment of the fragmentation of identity beyond the binary vision of gender, within a certain humanist expressionism that characterizes her work.

Among the numerous solo exhibitions, the most important are DAS KLASSISCHE LIEBEN, Kunsthalle Basel, 1983; Swiss Pavilion, 41^st Venice Biennale, 1984; STRATEGISCHE ORTE, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden / Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Bonn / DAAD Galerie, Berlin, 1985-86; UNBENENNBAR, Kunsthaus Zürich, 1993; Überdachte fluchtwege, Kirchner Museum, Davos, 2016; everything is equally important, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2019 and MIRIAM CAHN: I AS HUMAN, Haus der Kunst, Munich / Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2019. Her collective exhibitions include: Feministische Kunst International, Haia, Amsterdam, 1979; Documenta 7, Kassel, 1982; DSammlung Van de Loo, Neu National Galerie, Berlin, 2004; Module mai, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2010; Documenta 14, Kassel; 21st Biennale of Sidney, 2018, among others. Cahn was a DAAD grantee, Berlin, 1985, and she received various prizes, like the Käthe Kollwitz Award Berlin, 1998 and the Grand Prix Suisse d’Art Meret Oppenheim, 2005. Her work is represented in museums like the MoMA, New York; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and Tate Modern, Londres.

 

SN, November 2020