Miriam Cahn devoir-pleurer

Opening 8 September, 3-7 pm

For her fifth solo exhibition at the gallery, we are pleased to announce our next exhibition devoir-pleurer by Miriam Cahn in September 2024. Spanning more than four decades, Miriam Cahn’s diverse practice encompasses paintings, works on paper, slideshows, photography, and notebooks. Shaped by her serial thinking and reflecting her humanist perspective on the world, her work explores themes ranging from war, its injustice and violence, to individual and intimate experiences of identity and sexuality, such as being a woman or a Jew.

This year, she was honored with two of the most prestigious European art prizes: the Oskar Kokoschka Prize from the Austrian Federal Government and the Goslar Kaiserring from the city of Goslar.
In October 2024, her solo exhibition READING DUST opens at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

MY RHYTHMIC WRITING

cahn a jewish surname
my father german Jew
me raised in Switzerland without religion
child - I didn’t know what Jew meant
my father’s school friends were spread all over the world
when they would come to visit us I especially liked their german with american accents and their history/stories
the uncle from Berlin the aunt from Karlsruhe both left-wing zionist kibbutzniks
I only began to understand during puberty
began to see the difference between me and my swiss girlfriends
began to understand why my father learnt Basel german during the war
(...)
Excerpt from the exhibition text: MY RHYTHMIC WRITING, written by Miriam Cahn, 2024