Have you ever heard of French artist Sophie Calle, one of France’s most famous conceptual artists? While many might not make it to San Francisco before April 12th for her exhibition at Fraenkel Gallery, Calle’s influence as a conceptual artist continues to spread beyond gallery walls.
The conceptual art of Sophie Calle: a journey through life and intimacy
Sophie Calle is a French artist, born in 1953, who bases her work around her philosophy, using different mediums such as photography, combined with various other forms, including writing and installations. Her work has been recently featured in major publications like the Financial Times and exhibited globally. For Italian art enthusiasts, Calle’s universal themes of vulnerability, identity, and intimacy strike a particular chord. Whether her exhibitions reach Italy or not, her ideas resonate through her innovative use of text and photography, inviting viewers to reflect on the way we navigate private lives in public spaces. Calle’s work remains a powerful commentary on the human condition, no matter where you are.
Consider this article a deeper dive into the world of Sophie Calle…
Calle’s work is raw, unfiltered, and unapologetically intimate, and known for working with archival imagery. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, examines identity and intimacy, but also explores questions about legacy and loss, approached with her typical humor and candor.
Everyday Life as Art: how Sophie Calle transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary
French artist Sophie Calle was always curious about human beings, drawn to the mundane rituals that shape our lives, “secret lives”. Getting a haircut, grocery shopping… transforming them into artistic investigations. Therefore our own individual realities in which we live, was an intriguing subject for her to base her work on. This concept of passing a complete stranger in the streets to then becoming part of their lives, was on an emotional level a comforting one for Sophie.
TRUE STORIES
The perception of truth is something Calle has been working with from the beginning. She maintains that people ask her whether her stories are real so frequently that she decided to call one of her books True Stories, published in 1994, which, understandably, convinced nobody.
THE SLEEPERS, 1979
“I asked people to give me eight hours of their sleep. To come and sleep in my bed. For eight days, my room was to be a constantly occupied space. Twenty-seven people agreed. […]”
– Sophie Calle about the Sleepers
French artist Sophie Calle is widely known for her conceptual approach to art, often blurring the boundaries between public and private life, the voyeuristic and the theatrical. Sometimes she uses elements of chance; other times, she often imposes bizarre rules on her everyday life in order to document the results. In 1979, she invited 29 people to occupy her bed for eight hours as she observed them sleeping, waking and eating breakfast served by her. She created what was her first signature piece.
SUITE VÉNITIENNE, 1980
Began when she met a stranger at a party and decided to somehow follow him to Venice, what followed was part theatrical performance and part noir detective thriller. Having found him, she somehow convinced the woman in the room opposite to let her use it to clandestinely photograph his daily comings-and-goings while disguised as a maid. Calle is known for her detective-like approach of following strangers and delving into their private lives, you could label “stalker-like” tendencies. These photographs represented an invasive form of investigation, as the subject was unaware he was being observed. Calle felt a profound connection to this person through the intimate details of his actions, despite him having no knowledge of her surveillance.
newmindseye
VENISE BIENNALE, 2007
Sophie Calle‘s art is at its most compelling when it pushes the boundaries of social conventions. One of her most notable projects, Take Care of Yourself, showcased at the 2007 Venice Biennale, is a striking example. Calle took a cold break-up text she had received from a lover and shared it with 107 women, asking for their interpretations. Their responses varied from songs and drawings to a copy of the letter riddled with bullet holes.
This project goes beyond personal catharsis: it serves as a thought-provoking reflection on human emotions, relationships, and how desire and obsession can unsettle our sense of self. Calle’s work continues to captivate audiences by exposing raw, unfiltered aspects of human behavior.
“À TOI DE FAIRE, MA MIGNONNE”, 2024
Sophie Calle’s exhibition at the Picasso museum in Paris, takes a curious, quirky look at a selection of Picasso’s most emblematic works, her own version of Guernica, The show was a deeply personal and conceptual exploration of grief, memory, absence, and art history, intertwining Calle’s own experiences with Picasso’s legacy.
CRYPTOPORTIQUES D’ARLES, 2024
One of Sophie Calle’s most striking exhibitions of the past year, Finir en beauté, was showcased at Les Rencontres d’Arles, the renowned French photography festival. In this unique installation, Calle deliberately allowed her works to deteriorate under the effects of mold, giving her prints a symbolic “second death.” The exhibition took place in the cryptoporticus of Arles, a naturally humid underground space that had previously damaged artworks in past editions of the festival.
Among the featured works were prints from Les Aveugles, her touching 1986 series exploring how blind individuals perceive beauty. For this project, Calle asked people born without sight to describe their idea of beauty. Interestingly, their responses focused almost entirely on visual imagery: goldfish in a tank, a green meadow, or French movie star Alain Delon…rather than tactile sensations. After a water damage incident in her studio caused these prints to decay, she chose to integrate them into this thought-provoking funerary installation, embracing the themes of loss, memory, and transformation.
In addition to the photographs, Calle disposed of numerous personal belongings that she could never throw away: unused keys, an old bed, love letters, santiags… A testimony to what disappears but refuses to be erased, hence the name Ni donné ni jeté. She chooses to give her pieces a final restful place.
parisperdu
In conclusion
The global recognition of Sophie Calle highlights the universal appeal of her work. Through a unique fusion of photography, writing, and performance, she has established herself as one of the most influential conceptual artists of our time. Known for working extensively with archives, Calle defies easy classification. If you look her up online, she appears as a writer. However, she is so much more than that.
Her work challenges fundamental questions: How do we define privacy? Can meaningful art exist without struggle or hardship? What happens when images and words intertwine, even if neither is extraordinary on its own? Rather than providing clear answers, Sophie Calle remains an enigma, an enduring source of intrigue and inspiration.
“I am obviously more attracted to things missing, or to something that is not there more than something that is there […] I know how I live my life. I have a little magnet brain that attracts the kind of things that obsess me […]”
– Sophie Calle in 2014 with Interview Magazine.
