(中文)
In her first major solo exhibition in Canada and North America, Miriam Cahn presents an expansive body of work across The Power Plant’s gallery spaces. Encompassing works in chalk, charcoal, pastel, and watercolor on paper, and oil paintings—from the diminutive to the monumental—as well as film, photography, and text, the exhibition explores critical issues of our time, seen through the prism of feminism and more recently the #MeToo Movement. Uncompromising and confrontational, Cahn’s …
(中文)
In her first major solo exhibition in Canada and North America, Miriam Cahn presents an expansive body of work across The Power Plant’s gallery spaces. Encompassing works in chalk, charcoal, pastel, and watercolor on paper, and oil paintings—from the diminutive to the monumental—as well as film, photography, and text, the exhibition explores critical issues of our time, seen through the prism of feminism and more recently the #MeToo Movement. Uncompromising and confrontational, Cahn’s work has conscientiously explored a wide range of themes over the course of her career, including women’s rights, identity, sexuality, and war. Her work challenges the conventions of art history, contemporary connoisseurship, and how an artist chooses to engage with the world.
ME AS HAPPENING presents some of these themes in distinct yet interrelated constellations of works. At the core of the artist’s concerns is the role of women in today’s society, and their continued worldwide fight for basic rights and equality. Some of the works question gender roles, especially perceptions of femininity and masculinity, challenging heteronormative bias and socially constructed definitions. Other works explore the human body and the dynamics of intimacy, interrogating the relationship between sex, violence, and power. A collection of Cahn’s chalk drawings captures the purported differences between men’s and women’s environments, underscoring how the former are often associated with the outer world, conjuring sombre imagery of warships, oil rigs, and high-rise buildings, while the latter continue to be identified with domesticity.
The exhibition Miriam Cahn: ME AS HAPPENING was initiated, organized, and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in collaboration with Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark, where it was first presented (8 October 2020-4 April 2021).