CAHN, MIRIAM

* 21.7. 1949 Basel

Miriam Cahn was born in Basel in 1949 after her parents, her father being Jewish, fled to Switzerland to escape the Nazi regime. Her mother, who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and worked as an artist herself, taught her daughter to draw at an early age. Between 1968 and 1973 Miriam Cahn attended the graphic arts class at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel. She left home and embarked on the first of several journeys to South America. On her return, she worked as a scientific draughtswoman and gave drawing lessons. She became involved in the anti-nuclear movement and the women's movement, and in 1977 participated as a delegate at the Peace Congress in Warsaw. In 1979/80 she was fined after she painted charcoal drawings and the words "mein frausein ist mein öffentlicher teil" (my womanhood is my public part) on the concrete wall and pillars of the Nordtangente in Basel.

In 1982, Miriam Cahn was invited by Rudi Fuchs to documenta 7, but cancelled at short notice after a second artist was also scheduled to exhibit in her space. In the years to come, she would continually develop new series of works, which always made reference to world politics, for, as Jana Baumann describes, Cahn took an active part in political and social discourses: "In times of renewed nationalism, reactionary conservatism, sexism, populism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and of contempt for pluralism, Cahn's artistic work has not only become vastly more explosive, but its central importance for a radically expanded understanding of the role of women in art historiography is now indisputable.

In her long career as an artist, Cahn has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes. She was awarded the Hyposwiss Prize in 1988, the Karl-Ströher Prize in 1997, the Käthe Kollwitz Prize in 1998, the Prix Merkt Oppenheim in 2005 and the Basel Art Prize in 2013. Especially in recent years, Miriam Cahn's oeuvre has attracted much attention and has been celebrated with numerous solo exhibitions, such as at the Haus der Kunst in Munich or the Kunsthaus Bregenz. She took part in documenta in 2017.

Miriam Cahn lives and works in Basel.