Exhibitions
Visceral and political: Miriam Cahn bares her gaze at MAAT
Swiss artist Miriam Cahn's first exhibition in Portugal. She arrives with O que nos olha (The Look at Us) at the MAAT, Belém Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology. A spectacular tour of 160 works on view from June 26 to October 27, including paintings, drawings, photographs—Cahn's interventions in them are interesting—as well as installations, sculptures, and videos.
Her work explores themes such as feminism, sexuality, violence, identity, the body, war, and the refugee crisis. She uses violent and often explicit imagery to confront the viewer with the political from within. Her work combines violence and the visceral—including explicit representations of the body—with symbolic elements, hybrid animals, and cartoonish faces or "smiley faces" that convey emotional tension.
Drawing on the expressionist style that characterizes Cahn's work, a visceral, energetic experience is combined in a final work that confronts the viewer without appeasing their gaze. The Basel-based artist exhibits representative works from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. She comes to MAAT after exhibiting at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Documenta 14 in Kassel, and the Venice Biennale in 1984, and most recently in 2022.
The body occupies a central place in Miriam Cahn's work, not only as a recurring theme, but also as a structural axis of her artistic imagery. As curators João Pinharanda and Sérgio Mah point out, it is a domain with multiple resonances: the body is simultaneously a matter of reflection and a means of expression, a starting point from which the artist articulates perspectives, tensions, and visual gestures. In her work, the body is not simply a represented motif, but a tool that amplifies ways of seeing, drawing, and painting—a channel through which the intimate and the political merge, often with visceral intensity.
Miriam Cahn is a pivotal figure in European contemporary art, known for her visual intensity, political commitment, and visceral aesthetic. This exhibition offers a broad look at her recent and retrospective work, focusing on the body as a field of tension and resistance.
