Miriam Cahn (born in Basel, 1949) lives and works in Stampa, Switzerland.
Influenced by performance art and the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, she was often using and instrumentalising her body to create the drawing in a perfomative act. Miriam Cahn came to international prominence with three successive and unprecedented opportunities: an inclusion in Documenta 7 in 1982 (in which she removed her work out of protest), a solo show at Kunsthalle Basel, curated by director Jean-Christophe Ammann in 1983, and a solo presentation at the 41st Venice Biennale in 1984 representing her country of Switzerland. Decades later at age 50, she made a radical move in her practice when she decided to leave the monumental drawings in which she became known, for an equally intuitive painting practice. This move was a direct evolution and innovation of the result of 30 years of drawing and performing. With exquisite sensitivity, Cahn uses color to highlight choice parts of her figures – principally breasts, lips, or eyes—suggesting fragility and fecundity and endowing her figures with a sense of inner life.
2023
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
2022
MEINEJUDEN, 14.Rubenspreis der Stadt Siegen, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany
Venice Biennale 2022, Venice, Italy
GEZEICHNET, Fondazione ICA Milano, Milan, Italy
2021
ME AS HAPPENING, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada
ME AS HAPPENING, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark
FREMD das fremde, Palazzo Castelmur, Stampa, Switzerland
Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China
2020
2020 ZEIGE!, Meyer Riegger, Berlin, Germany
NOTRE SUD, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris, France
2019
I AS HUMAN, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej, Warsaw, Poland
ICH ALS MENSCH, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
ICH ALS MENSCH, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland
MIRIAM CAHN todo es igual de importante, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia,
Madrid, Spain
DAS GENAUE HINSCHAUEN, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria
2017
devoir-aimer, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris, France
2016
mare nostrum, Meyer Riegger, Berlin, Germany
2014
Körperlich/corporel, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, France
2011
The David Roberts Art Foundation Fitzrovia, London, United Kingdom
2003
Fundación La Caixa, Madrid, Spain
1993
UNBENENNBAR (was mich anschaut), Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
1985
Strategische Orte, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany
1983
Das klassische Lieben – Die all-egoistische Frau, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2022
R.A.W. or the sirens of Titan, Kunstmuseum Appenzell+Kunsthalle Appenzell, Switzerland
Résister, encore, Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland
Edvard Munch. In Dialogue, Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria
2021
Collection François Pinault, Bourse du Commerce, Paris, France
Arcimboldo, Centre Pompidou-Metz, France
Crespo Foundation, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
2020
Is Humanism Dead?, MoMA, New York, USA
My Perversion is the Belief in True Love, Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland
2018
Quel Amour!?, Musée d‘art contemporain, Marseille, France
21st Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
2017
Documenta 14, Learning from Athens, Kassel, Germany and Athens, Greece
2016
No Man’ s Land, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., USA
2015
What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now, IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
2014
In the near future, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland
2013
Descartes’ Daughter, Swiss Institute, New York, USA
2011
6 Künstler aus Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2002
Sammlung, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Kunst und Schock, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Germany
1996
Pittura, Castello di Rivara, Centro d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivara, Italy
1994
Drawings, Centre d’ Art Contemporain, Genf, Switzerland
1992
Szenenwechsel, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
1987
Stiller Nachmittag, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
1984
41st Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1982
Documenta 7, Kassel, Germany
Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Tate Modern, London, UK
the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Long Museum, Shanghai, China
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Museum for Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland
Osaka Museum, Osaka, Japan
Rubell Collection, Miami, USA
Pinault Collection, Paris, France
