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.
2023Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
2022MEINEJUDEN, 14.Rubenspreis der Stadt Siegen, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany
Venice Biennale 2022, Venice, Italy
GEZEICHNET, Fondazione ICA Milano, Milan, Italy
2021ME 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
20202020 ZEIGE!, Meyer Riegger, Berlin, Germany
NOTRE SUD, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris, France
2019I 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
2017devoir-aimer, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris, France
2016mare nostrum, Meyer Riegger, Berlin, Germany
2014Körperlich/corporel, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, France
2011The David Roberts Art Foundation Fitzrovia, London, United Kingdom
2003Fundación La Caixa, Madrid, Spain
1993UNBENENNBAR (was mich anschaut), Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
1985Strategische Orte, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany
1983Das klassische Lieben – Die all-egoistische Frau, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2022R.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
2021Collection 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
2020Is Humanism Dead?, MoMA, New York, United States
My Perversion is the Belief in True Love, Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland
2018Quel Amour!?, Musée d‘art contemporain, Marseille, France
21st Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
2017Documenta 14, Learning from Athens, Kassel, Germany and Athens, Greece
2016No Man’ s Land, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., United States
2015What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now, IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
2014In the near future, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland
2013Descartes’ Daughter, Swiss Institute, New York, United States
20116 Künstler aus Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2002Sammlung, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Kunst und Schock, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Germany
1996Pittura, Castello di Rivara, Centro d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivara, Italy
1994Drawings, Centre d’ Art Contemporain, Genf, Switzerland
1992Szenenwechsel, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
1987Stiller Nachmittag, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
198441st Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1982Documenta 7, Kassel, Germany
Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom
the Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States
Long Museum, Shanghai, China
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Museum for Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland
Osaka Museum, Osaka, Japan
Rubell Collection, Miami, United States
Pinault Collection, Paris, France
