Miriam Cahn (b. 1949 in Basel) creates art
about human vulnerabilities and fearlessly faces
big issues head on, be it war, violence, trauma,
sexuality or death. Her treatment of taboo topics
often evokes disquiet, which for her is a way
of prompting society to look critically at its own
norms. Her art, which is at once radical and
personal, has made her one of Switzerland’s most
successful contemporary artists. Just last year
the Palais de Tokyo in Paris honoured her with a
major retrospective.
In Muttertraum Cahn seems to see the female
body as a bearer of social meaning. The figure it
depicts has duplicate maternal attributes (four
breasts) and scarcely any face at all, since it portrays not an individual but the mother as concept,
which viewers themselves can then imagine.
By reducing the figure to her sexuality alone, Cahn
deconstructs the social role of the mother. How
can individuality and motherhood be reconciled?
Works that grapple with personal matters are
by no means atypical of this artist and it seems
likely that here, too, social critique was not her
only concern. Cahn herself never wanted to be a
mother and Muttertraum shows her anatomising
her perception of that role.
Oil on canvas
140 × 66 cm
Copyright: Miriam Cahn
Provenance: donated by Eva Dichand Collection
