SOPHIE CALLE
French
Sophie Calle produces unique, even idiosyncratic,
works at the intersection of performance, photo-
graphy, and literature. She continually thwarts
expectations by radically transforming her artis-
tic methodology for almost every new project.
Although Calle works within the lineage of con-
ceptual art, at times recalling the earlier tactics
of American conceptual artists of the 1960s and
‘70s Vito Acconci (surveillance) or Douglas Hue-
bler (mapping), she always places herself in the
midst of her practice, as personal narratives
unfold within the varying structural contexts of
gallery installations, photographic books, and
video documentation.
Calle was born in Paris, France, 9 October 1953.
Her parents divorced when she was only three years
old. She was an introverted child who read avidly.
Calle’s father, a doctor, collected contemporary art
including examples of Pop Art by the Americans
Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol and the French
painter Martial Raysse. Calle was heavily influenced
by the turbulent politics of the late 1960s and has
recalled, ‘‘At 15, I was a militant.’’ At the age of 18,
Calle traveled to Lebanon and witnessed the Pales-
tinian struggles firsthand. After her initial sojourn
abroad, she returned to likewise witness struggles in
Paris between assorted factions of activists, and she
involved herself with a group which assisted women
in obtaining free contraception and abortion (then
illegal in France) on demand. Throughout a seven-
year period during the 1970s, Calle spent much of
her time traveling abroad, including Canada, Mex-
ico, and the United States.
In 1979, Calle asked 29 different friends and
acquaintances to sleep in her bed for eight-hour
stretches during a one-week long period, and her
resulting documentation culminated in a work
calledThe Sleepers. Subsequently, Calle created
Venetian Suite, which begins with the statement:
At the end of January 1981, on the streets of Paris, I
followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes
later in the crowd. That very evening, quite by chance,
he was introduced to me at an opening. During the
course of our conversation, he told me he was planning
an imminent trip to Venice. I decided to follow him.InThe Hotel, while working as a chambermaid,
Calle made clandestine photographs of the guests’
belongings. In 1983, she called phone numbers
taken from a lost address book, and then published
documentation of her communications each day
that August in the newspaperLibe ́ration. Such ela-
borate stunts and clever games have become a hall-
mark of her creative approach.
InThe Blind(1986) one of Calle’s most poignant
pieces, she interviewed people who were born
blind, querying them about their ideas of beauty.
In the resulting works, Calle grouped photo-
graphic portraits of the interviewees along with
their statements (‘‘White must be the color of pur-
ity. I’m told white is beautiful. So I think it’s
beautiful. But even if it weren’t beautiful, it
would be the same thing.’’) and an image taken
by the artist. A similar instance of physical absence
coupled with verbal description is exemplified by
the seriesLast Seen(1991), in which Calle solicited
comments from museum employees about ‘‘miss-
ing’’ works which then were on loan or had been
stolen. The remarks shared with Calle ranged
widely from being vague and speculative, to at
times poetic or exacting in nature (‘‘I don’t remem-
ber it at all. Except, I remember there was a guy
with a top hat and maybe a mustache/I remember
a predominant russet tone apart from the pale rose
colored face and hands’’).
Calle’s projects have incorporated both social
and personal contexts. InExquisite Pain(1984–
2003), Calle displayed 92 photographs and re-
counted a three-month period she spent in Japan
as a student, and the subsequent and painful end of
a romantic relationship. The photographs are
stamped in red to record the artist’s countdown
‘‘...DAYS TO UNHAPPINESS.’’ The second
part of the exhibition is devoted to images evoking
and texts recording the period after Calle’s lover
fails to appear at their designated meeting place, a
hotel room in New Delhi. Here, Calle places a
diaristic description of her own angst alongside
the responses of others to the question ‘‘When
have you suffered the most?’’ The 2003 video
Unfinished(and an accompanying group of photo-
graphs) documents Calle’s attempts to create a
work using footage and photographs appropriatedCALLE, SOPHIE