MIRIAM CAHN AWARDED WITH THE GOSLAR KAISSERRING
Swiss artist Miriam Cahn has been awarded the Goslar Kaiserring 2024. The award ceremony will be held on October 12, 2024, but we’d already like to take the opportunity to celebrate one of the most important contemporary artists.
The work of the Basel-born artist is characterized by a powerful form of expression that weaves together social issues and individual reflections, the Kaiserring jury wrote in a statement.
Influenced by performance art and the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, her rich oeuvre spanning more than four decades, encompasses oil paintings and works on paper in chalk, charcoal, pastel, and watercolor as well as film, photography, and text. An uncompromising artist, Cahn critically engages with themes such as women’s rights, identity, sexuality, and war. “With great urgency she evokes the injustices and dramas that people suffer or have to suffer, be they of a political or intimate nature,” the jury went on to say about Cahn’s work.
Best known for her large-scale drawing, installations and performances, Cahn’s work oscillates between extreme poles of human emotion. The main themes, in terms of content and style, are the vulnerability of the body and the attraction of lust and violence.
Her highly relevant works have been shown in numerous exhibitions worldwide, from the 1984 Venice Biennale, where she represented Switzerland, to her 2019 exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich and 2023 at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
The Goslar Kaiserring is one of the most renowned prizes for modern art in Germany. It has been awarded since 1975. The list of previous winners includes Max Ernst, Alexander Calder,Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Nam June Paik, Christo, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Andreas Gursky, Olafur Eliasson, Barbara Kruger and Isaac Julien.
Hatje Cantz is pleased to present our publications with the artist that give a deeper insight into Miriam Cahn’s work:
Cahn's habit of commenting on her work in writing is a common thread throughout her career. She illuminates her own art, commenting on the process, art, and world events, and she places the texts alongside her artwork in exhibitions and publications. WRITING IN RAGE is the first collection of her writings and includes essays, journal entries, and correspondence with friends, foes, family, and gallerists. The book offers highly personal insights into Cahn's life, her family, and the art market, and introduces the reader to a disputatious, independent spirit.
The book is available both in print and digitally as an ePub and PDF in English, German and French.
As part of a multi-layered performance, Cahn’s project FOREIGN the foreignness STRANIERITÀ embraces the theme of being a stranger and advances a deepening of the discourse surrounding her work. The book, that is available both in English and German, reflects the openness of Miriam Cahn's artistically and socially stirring project from 2021, which Cahn, who has lived in Graubünden for years, showed in the historic Palazzo Castelmur.
Image credit for all images:: © Lukas Wassmann
