Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle’s art – varying from photography, video, films and books to texts and performances – walks the line between the desire to exert control over reality and the desire to surrender that control. She creates works based on her personal life, but also projects that themselves determine the rhythms of her daily existence. In this way, her personal life is not only the subject but an instrument; it is an essential part of her artistic practice.

By approaching life as a game that must be played according to specific rules, rituals or instructions, Calle creates space to surrender to the unexpected – like an awkward encounter or a fortune teller’s predictions (see Where and when? Berck). Such events are recounted in her art in a factual and restrained way.

In 1979, Calle decided to tag along with random passers-by as they moved about the city. Since then, she has invented numerous scenarios in which she makes other people part of an artwork, including both those she knows intimately (such as her mother) and total strangers. This was explicitly evident in The Sleepers (1979), in which Calle invited people to sleep in her bed for eight-hour shifts. As a result of her methods, her projects often teeter on the edge of what is acceptable in terms of other people’s privacy. In The Address Book (1983), for instance, she found an address book on the street and attempted to learn about its unknown owner through telephone conversations with the contacts in the book.

In dealing with emotionally charged themes such as loss, desire and obsession, Calle adopts a business-like tone that – rather than detracting from her power of expression – serves to strengthen it. The line between fact and fiction becomes virtually imperceptible, fostering more of the ambiguity that gives her work its power.