| Miriam Cahn's work display dense, rubbed, grainy textures and light strokes, invoking the presence of the body, Cahn is concerned with the politics of representation of the body. In the catalogue for her 1996 and 1967 exhibition What Looks at Me Surroundings Bonner Kunstverein and tour she wrote, no standing back in painter poses and correcting, improving until it became the masterpiece. 1 worked on the floor to forget everything, to see nothing, to be close to the personal, the feminine, to everything forbidden. I rejected the assertion that art is gender neutral. Her drawings Das Klassische Leiben Classical Loving (1983) are a critique of the relationship between masculinity and femininity in fine art. The expressive strength of Cahn's graphic work recalls that of Kathe Kollwitz, and in 1998 Cahn was awarded the Kathe Kollwitz Prize by the Akademie der Kunste, Berlin. The links between Cahn's work with femininity and identity and that of her contemporaries were explored in the exhibition The Impossible held at Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba, in 1988, which also included Sonia Boyce, Astrid Klein and Avis Newman. Cahn represented Switzerland at the 1984 Venice Biennale. Cahn has made work about history, war and the environment, in 1977 she was a woman's movement delegate to the Warsaw world peace congress. Her Strategische Orte Strategic Places 1985 represents a bird's-eye view of landscape, cityscape and dark, churning water. Cahn's response to a more recent conflict was the series Sarajevo 1993, one of which represents a mournful face, eyes shut against the horror. |
