Miriam Cahn

Art played a role in Miriam Cahn's life from an early age

Miriam Cahn was born in Basel on 21st July 1949. Her father was the German-born archaeologist Herbert A. Cahn, who was forced to emigrate to Switzerland in 1933 due to the political situation. Art has always played a role in Miriam Cahn's educated family - even as a child she visited, wide-eyed, exhibitions of Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely, and from 1968 to 1973, she attended the graphics class at the Basel School of Design. The Swiss artist did not choose her famous countrywomen Sophie Taeuber-Arp or Meret Oppenheim as role models, but instead the rather wild performance artists Valie Export and Ulrike Rosenbach. Her first own art project, in which she illegally painted murals on a motorway bridge near Basel, was similarly unconventional and rebellious, earning her not only her arrest on Christmas Eve of all days, but also a trial and subsequent conviction.

Scandal at documenta 7, Berlinale participation and DAAD scholarship

This bumpy start did not harm Miriam Cahn's career - on the contrary: her daring performance in Basel suddenly made her widely known and resulted in an invitation to documenta 7. This, however, ended in a scandal for the artist: contrary to previous agreements, curator Rudi Fuchs did not provide her with her own space, which prompted Cahn to withdraw her artworks in clearly articulated protest. That was in 1982; over two decades later, Cahn received her belated reward at documenta 14 in 2017, this time, under the curation of Adam Szymczyk, where she was granted an entire room in which she won over visitors and critics with her colourful, expressive and sometimes drastic pictures under the motto "could be". Between these poles, Miriam Cahn won prizes and exhibitions, including participation in the 1984 Venice Biennale and a DAAD scholarship that took her to Berlin.

The great crises of humanity, war, and feminism as subject matter

The dominant theme for the artist Miriam Cahn is the feminist aspect of her art, with which she rebels against what she sees as a male-dominated art world, wishing to free herself and her fellow female artists from the omnipresent oppression. The artist wages this battle almost defiantly, with never-ending energy and, unflinchingly, against all opposition. Cahn is just as consistent in her approach to war and the major refugee disasters, which she sees first and foremost as a male phenomenon, an expression and consequence of masculine tendencies towards violence, with her pictures depicting victims and perpetrators, using a wide variety of materials and formats. The distanced, upright posture of the painter in front of the painting is alien to her; she perceives this pose as masculine and generic and instead seeks a more direct approach to her art, often working directly on the floor covered in paint and chalk dust, where she virtually fights for her pictures with her whole body and intense movements.

Miriam Cahn lives and works in Basel and Maloja.