Booth walkthrough
MIRIAM CAHN
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff (Paris)
In Spanish, without translation.
Open to the public.
Some works resist explanation, but knowing the circumstances, urgency, and thinking from which they emerged can alter how deeply we encounter them. Few artists have made the relationship between the personal and the political as uncompromisingly visible as Miriam Cahn. Emerging from the feminist and anti-nuclear movements of the 1970s, Cahn has returned repeatedly to bodies subjected to desire, aging, vulnerability, violence, and war. ESTE FOCUS is a moment to look closely, listen carefully, and understand the ideas behind the work and the process that brought it into being.
CURATORIAL VISION
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff presents works on paper by Miriam Cahn spanning different moments of her practice. Several relate to her sustained investigation into the representation of war, violence, and experiences that resist conventional depiction. An early drawing from 1989 belongs to a period in which Cahn works primarily in black and white, using charcoal on fragile paper and bringing the movement of her entire body into the act of drawing. More recent works introduce color while continuing her engagement with portraiture, bodily vulnerability, disability, aging, conflict, and mortality. Across the presentation, drawing operates simultaneously as image, physical action, and a means of confronting difficult social and political realities.
BIO
Miriam Cahn (b. 1949, Basel, Switzerland) Born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1949. Lives and works in Stampa, Bergell (Canton of Graubünden), Switzerland. Miriam Cahn’s artistic practice, primarily centered on figurative painting, explores social issues related to her rejection of all forms of oppression, as well as her response to contemporary political concerns, including gender-based violence, migration crises, and armed conflicts. In dialogue with the European feminist movements of the 1970s, the body continues to occupy a central place in her work, both as a subject and as an artistic medium. Miriam Cahn has had numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including at Kunstmuseum Bern (2019), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2019), Museo Reina Sofía (2019), Haus der Kunst (2019), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2019–2020), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (2020–2021), Sifang Art Museum (2020), The Power Plant (2021), Fondazione ICA Milano (2022), Palais de Tokyo (2023), Stedelijk Museum (2024), and MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (2025).