Miriam Cahn - Ciò che mi guarda (What Looks at Me)

A major museum retrospective dedicated to one of the most independent, radical figures in international contemporary art, who has remained aloof from market trends and committed to a body of work that intertwines feminism, the human body, politics and memory for over half a century. In its main hall, a space of around 1,400 square metres, the MACRO museum is presenting to the public over 130 works by the Swiss artist Miriam Cahn, born in Basel in 1949.

Despite the growing international attention devoted to her work in recent years (from the 2022 Venice Biennale to major exhibition at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Palais de Tokyo in Paris and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam), a major survey exhibition in an Italian museum institution had until now yet to be realized. The exhibition, promoted by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, and curated by the museum’s artistic director Cristiana Perrella, spans the artist’s entire career, from the late 1970s to her most recent works. The works, mainly paintings, drawings and pastels, do not follow a chronological order but are rather structured into thematic groups that highlight the artist’s formal and political areas of exploration: the female body, violence, war, desire and the erotic dimension as an act of resistance.

A central element of the project is the room installations, an exhibition format that Miriam Cahn has employed since the 1980s and which remains one of the most distinctive aspects of her practice. Each installation corresponds to a specific body of work, designed to dialogue within a precise spatial configuration. On view at MACRO are Herumliegen and Familienraum. Conceived following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Herumliegen is a visceral and immediate response to current wars and conflicts, evoking – right from the title (German for “lying around”, “being scattered”) – the image of mass death and abandoned bodies. Comprising 12 oil paintings and 4 drawings produced over more than a decade, from 1996 to 2009, Familienraum turns its gaze towards memory, affection and private geographies, with abstract portraits of the artist’s family members and visions of inner landscapes.