Born in 1953 in Paris, France
Lives and works in Malakoff, France
SOPHIE CALLE
Born in 1953 in Paris, France
Lives and works in Malakoff, France
SOLO EXHIBITIONS :
2016
- Histoires vraies, Théâtre Liberté, Toulon, France
- For the Last and First Time, Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, Nagasaki, Japan
2015
- Sophie Calle, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, USA
- For the Last and First Time, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Japan
- Cuídese mucho, Centro Cultural Kirchner, Buenos Aires, Argentinia
- Modus vivendi, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelone, Spain
- Sophie Calle: North Pole, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, USA
- Pour la dernière et pour la première fois, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Canada
2014
- Sophie Calle, Makoto Aida, Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong
- Cuídese mucho, Museo Tamayo, Mexico, Mexico
- MAdRE, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
- Sophie Calle, An Introduction, Un cabinet d’amateur, Sofia, Bulgaria
- Cuídese mucho, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico
- Rachel Monique, Church of the Heavenly Rest, New York, USA
- Voir la mer, Église Notre-Dame de l’Assomption, Valloire, France
2013
- Dérobés, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
- Last Seen, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, USA
- Absence, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA
- Chambre 20, Hôtel La Mirande, Avignon, France
- Où et Quand?, 313 Art Project, Séoul, South Korea
- For the Last and First Time, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan
- Take Care of Yourself, Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway
- Take Care of Yourself, Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway
2012
- Pour la dernière et pour la première fois, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
- Pour la dernière et pour la première fois, Rencontres d’Arles, Chapelle du Méjan, Arles, France
- Rachel Monique, Festival d’Avignon, Église des Célestins, Avignon, France
- Historias de pared, Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia
- Moi aussi, Musée du Septennat, Château-Chinon, France
- Historias de pared, Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia
- Take Care of Yourself, Espoon modernin taiteen museo, Espoon, Finland
- Take Care of Yourself, The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint Louis, USA
2011
- Take Care of Yourself / Hoia end. Ole tubli, Tallinna Kunstihoone, Tallinn, Estonia
- Son Kez, Ilk Kez, Sakip Sabanci Müzesi, Istanbul, Turkey
- True Stories, Prospect.2, 1850 House of the Louisiana State Museum, Nouvelle-Orléans, USA
- Room, Crossing the Line, The Lowell Hotel, New York, USA
2010
- Sophie Calle: 2010 Hasselblad Award Winner, Hasselblad Foundation, Göteborg, Sweden
- Rachel Monique, Friche du Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
- Where and when? Lourdes, Art Gallery Christina Wilson, Copenhague, Denmark
- Talking to Strangers, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark
- Talking to Strangers, De Pont Museum, Tilbourg, The Netherlands
2009
- The Address Book, Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, USA
- Cuide de você, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia
- Earth: Art of a Changing World, Royal Academy of Arts, Londres, UK
- Talking to Strangers, Whitechapel Gallery, Londres, UK
- Cuide de você, Museu de Arte Moderna de Salvador de Bahia, Brasilia
- Cuide de você, SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brasilia
- CALLE SOPHIE, Palais des Beaux-Arts, BOZAR, Bruxelles, Belgium
- No Sex Last Night, Centre Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia
- Take Care of Yourself, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA
- Où et Quand? Berck / Lourdes, Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany
2008
- Où et Quand ? Berck / Lourdes, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
- Prenez soin de vous, Fondation pour l’art contemporain DHC/ART, Montréal, Canada
- Prenez soin de vous, Bibliothèque nationale de France, site Richelieu, Paris, France
2007
- Prenez soin de vous, pavillon français de la 52e Biennale de Venise, Italy
- Douleur exquise (mise en scène Frank Gehry et Edwin Chan), Rotunda 1 de Bonnevoie, Luxembourg
2006
- La Cabine téléphonique (en collaboration avec Frank Gehry), Pont du Garigliano, Paris, France
- True Stories, Galerie Perrotin, Miami, USA
2005
- Exquisite Pain, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA
- Exquisite Pain, Portland Art Museum, USA
2004
- M’as-tu vue, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany
- M’as-tu vue, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany
- True Stories, Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany
- Die Entfernung – The Detachment, Kunst im Deutschen Bundestag, Berlin, Germany
2003
- M’as-tu vue, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
- Dommages collatéraux, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
- Sophie Calle, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Japan
- Editions, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, Japan
2002
- Gotham Handbook, Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany
- Sophie Calle, Spectrum, International Prize for Photography of the Foundation of Lower Saxony, Sprengel Museum, Hanovre, Germany
2001
- Double Game, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA
- Sophie Calle, Public Places – Private Spaces, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, USA
- Vingt ans après, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
- Editions, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
2000
- Die wahren Geschichten der Sophie Calle, Fridericianum, Cassel, Germany
- Die wahren Geschichten der Sophie Calle, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany
- Sophie Calle…, Librairie des Archives, Paris, France
- Sophie Calle, École régionale des Beaux-arts de Dunkerque, France
- Souvenirs de Berlin-Est, XXXIes Rencontres internationales de la photographie , Librairies Actes Sud, Arles, France
- Sophie Calle – Sol LeWitt, Donald Young Gallery, Chicago, USA
1999
- Les Tombes, Galerie Clara Rainhorn, Bruxelles, Belgium
- Doubles-jeux, Galerie Erna Hécey, Luxembourg
- Doubles-jeux, Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse, France
- Double Game, Camden Arts Centre, Londres, UK
- Appointment with Sigmund Freud, Freud Museum London, Londres, UK
- Souvenirs de Berlin-Est, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg, France
- De l’obéissance, Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany
- Double Game, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, Japan
- Douleur exquise, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan
- The Eruv, The Jewish Museum, New York, USA
1998
- L’Hôtel. La sphère de l’intime, Printemps de Cahors, France
- Doubles-jeux, Centre national de la photographie, Paris, France
- Double Game, Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK
- Detachment - Die Entfernung, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen, Germany
- The Birthday Ceremony, Tate Britain, Londres, UK
- L’Erouv, Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, France
1997
- Relatos, Fundación « la Caixa », Barcelone, Spain
- Relatos, Palacio de los Condes de Gabia, Grenade, Spain
- Detachment – Die Entfernung, Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne, Switzerland
- Comme si de rien n’était, Fondation Ledig-Rowohlt, Château de Lavigny Switzerland
- The Sleepers, Suite vénitienne, Birthday Ceremony, Donald Young Gallery, Seattle, USA
- Suite vénitienne, White Cube, Londres, UK
1996
- True Stories, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
- The Eruv of Jerusalem, Artfocus - International Biennal of Contemporary Art, Jérusalem, Israel
- Sophie Calle, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA
- Des Histoires vraies, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, Japan
- L’Erouv, XXVIIes Rencontres internationales de la photographie, Librairie Actes Sud, Arles, France
- L’Erouv, Journées d’art contemporain de Porto, Synagogue de Porto, Portugal
- The Detachment - Die Entfernung, Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany
- Relatos, Fundación « la Caixa », Madrid, Spain
1995
- Fravaer, Portalen, Copenhague, Denmark
- Proof, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara / Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland / David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, USA
- Les Autobiographies, Printemps de Cahors, France
- Les Tombes, Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany
1994
- L’Absence, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- The Husband, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, USA
- The Sleepers, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, USA
- Les Aveugles, Sala Amárica, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
- Romances, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, USA
- L’Absence, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France
- Des histoires vraies, FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Marseille, France
- Des histoires vraies, Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse, France
- L’Absence, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland
1993
- Blind Color, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, USA
- Proofs, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA
- Los Ciegos, Las Tumbas, Anatoli, Sala Mendoza, Caracas, Venezuela
- Los Ciegos, Las Tumbas, Anatoli, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Maracay, Venezuela
1992
- The Graves, Mills College Art Gallery, Oakland, USA
- A suivre, Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden
- Sophie Calle, Donald Young Gallery, Seattle, USA
- Pierre tombale, Centre culturel français, Palerme, Italy
- Les Tombes, Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse, France
1991
- Sophie Calle, Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, USA
- Sophie Calle, Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, USA
- A suivre, ARC, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
- Sophie Calle in under skinnët, Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden
1990
- Sophie Calle. A Survey, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA
- The Sleepers, Matrix Gallery, Berkeley University, USA
- Les Tombes, Galería La Máquina Española, Séville, Spain
- Les Tombes, Galerie Crousel-Robelin Bama, Paris, France
1989
- Sophie Calle. A Survey, Fred Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
1988
- Sophie Calle, Galería Montenegro, Madrid, Spain
1987
- J’ai rencontré des gens qui sont nés aveugles, Centre d’art de Flaine, France
- Anatoli, Museotrain du FRAC Limousin, Limoges, France
1986
- Anatoli, École des Beaux-Arts de Dunkerque, France
- Anatoli, Centre d’art contemporain, Orléans, France
- Les Aveugles, Galerie Crousel-Hussenot, Paris, France
- Les Aveugles, Tasmanian College of the Arts, Hobart, Australia
- Les Aveugles, De Appel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1985
- Sophie Calle, APAC - centre d’art contemporain, Nevers, France
1984
- L’Hôtel C., Galerie Formi, Nîmes, France
1983
- L’Hôtel C., Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France
1981
- Les Dormeurs, Galerie Canon, Genève, Switzerland
1980
- The Bronx, Fashion Moda, New York, USA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS :
2016
- Comida, transformação e arte, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brasília, Brasil (15/08-19/10)
- L’image volée, Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (17/03-28/ 08)
- Daniel Buren – A Fresco, Palais des Beaux-Arts, BOZAR, Bruxelles, Belgium (19/02-22/05)
2015
- The Memory of Time, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA (5/3 – 9/13/15)
- ON TIME: Photoworks from the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, Paris Photo, Paris, France (11/12 – 11/15/15)
- Archive Bound, The Center for Book Arts, New York, NY, USA (October 2015)
- For Future Reference, Centre for Contemporary Photographs, Fitzroy, Australia (7/3 - 9/6/15)
- Imagine Istanbul, Palais des Beaux-Arts, BOZAR, Bruxelles, Belgium (15/10-24/01)
- What We Call Love, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (12/09-14/02)
- Little is Left to Tell (Calvino after Calvino), Blueproject Foundation, Barcelone, Spain (12/06-01/11)
- L’Amour, la Mort, le Diable, Galerie des Hospices, Limoges, France (19/06-18/10)
- Wild Noise: Artwork from The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, La Havane, Cuba (21/05-6/08)
- Gallery 3010, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beyrouth, Lebanon (03/04-01/08)
- Une énigme insoluble, Galerie Vanessa Quang, Paris, France (13/06-20/06)
- Obsession, Maison Particulière Art Center, Bruxelles, Belgium (22/01- 29/03)
- Urban Anxiety, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (02/04-04/05)
- Arts & Foods: Rituals since 1851, Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy (09/04-01/11)
- The Serial Impulse, National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
2014
- Unsold, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sophie Calle, Ryota Aoyagi, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, Japan (20/11-31/01/2015)
- Recalculating Route, The Post Global Biennial, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Israel (02/10-31/01/2015)
- S’il y a lieu je pars avec vous, LE BAL, Paris, France (11/09-26/10)
- Silencio, Château Lacaze, France (15/08-05/10)
- Le Festin de l’art et Manger des yeux, Palais des Arts, Villa des Roches Brunes, Dinard, France (07/06-07/09)
- Festival des Arts éphémères, Maison Blanche, Marseille, France
- Les archives du rêve, Musée d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, Paris, France (26/03-30/06)
- Paparazzi, Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (26/02-9/06)
- Room Service, On the Hotel in the Arts and Artists in the Hotel, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany
- Dirge Reflections on (Life and) Death, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, USA (07/03-08/06)
- Love, Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany22/03- 29/06)
- Gola Arte e scienza del gusto, Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy
2013
-Within & Beyond: Works from Gemini G.E.L., Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, TX, USA (9/14 – 10/26/13)
- The Opposite of Justice, Base Arte Contemporanea Odierna, Bergamo, Italy (11/9 – 12/8/13)
- Fault Lines, curated by Constance Lewallen, Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Walk-On: 40 Years of Art Walking from Richard Long to Janet Cardiff, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, UK (6/1/13-9/31/13)
- Impulse and Connoisseurship, Westmont Museum of Art, Californie, USA (03/12-01/02/2014)
- Cet art qui m’entreprend #4…, UPE 13, Marseille, Paris, France (31/10-29/01/2014)
- Everyone carries a room inside, Museum on the Seam, Jérusalem, Israel (01/11- 28/02/2014)
- Œuvres de la collection Philippe Cohen, Passage de Retz, France (21/10-01/12)
- Cook Book. L’art et le processus culinaire, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (18/10-09/01)
- Tripostal, Lille 3000, Happy Birthday Galerie Perrotin 25 ans, Lille, France (11/10-12/01/2014)
- L’Oeil photographique, FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France (03/10-09/02/2014)
- Arctic, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (25/09-02/02/2014)
- Double Indemnity, Cornerhouse’s galleries, Manchester, UK (14/09-05/01/2014)
- Sophie Calle was a charming woman, Alfredo was a child, Paola Pivi makes a magic, Museo del Novecento, Milan, Italy
- Artists for Tichy, Tichy Ocean, Gask Museum of Art, Czech Republic (07/04-28/07)
- Pour mémoire : œuvres de la collection, Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France (25/05-21/07)
- Elles: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
- All You Need is Love, Prenez soin de vous, 10th Anniversary, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (26/04-01/09)
- Rêves de Venise, Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez, Bordeaux, France (23/03-21/07)
- Merci Mercy, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, New York, USA (24/01-17/02)
- Conceptual Geographies, Frames and Documents, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, New York, USA (23/01-23/03)
- The Unphotographable, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, USA (03/01-23/03)
2012
- Urban Archives: The Rituals of Chaos, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, USA (7/19 – 1/3/2013)
- Carnal Knowledge: Sex + Philosophy, Leslie Tonkonow, New York, USA (5/4 – 7/27/12)
- This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980’s, Museum of ContemporaryArt, Chicago, IL (2/11 – 6/3/12), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (6/30 – 9/30/12), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (11/16/12 – 3/3/13)
- Sophie Calle, Christian Marclay, Paul Pfeiffer, Walid Raad, Michael Sailstorfer, Carey Young, Paula Cooper Gallery, NY, USA
- Sophie Calle, sans titre, Un cabinet d’amateur, Olivier Boissiere ltd, Sofia, Bulgaria (15/12-20/01/2013)
- The Progress of Love, Prenez soin de vous, The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint Louis, USA (16/11-20/04/2013)
- Liebe, Tod und Teufel, von der Heydt-Kunsthalle, Wuppertal, Germany (11/11-03/02/2013)
- Privacy, The Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany (01/11- 03/02/2013)
- The Hidden Mother, Atelier Rouart, Paris, France (12/10-17/11) + C
- IXe biennale de Shanghai, China (02/10-31/03/2013)
- Elles: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Seattle Art Museum, USA (11/10-13/01/2013).
- La Plasticité du langage, Fondation Hippocrène, Paris, France
- Tate Liverpool Collection Exhibition: Thresholds, Liverpool Biennial, UK (12/09)
- Suite Chromatique, Une traversée en couleurs de la collection du FRAC Bretagne, Rennes, France (16/06-14/10)
- Treffpunkt : Berlin, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Germany (12/05-22/07)
- Les feux de l’amour, FRAC Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France (11/05-22/09)
- Célébration/Rêves de nature, Lux scène nationale de Valence, Musée des Beaux-arts et d’archéologie, Valence, France (10/05-10/07)
- Inaugurating our New Space and Celebrating 28 Years in New York, Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl, New York, USA (16/02-14/04)
- Spies in The House of Art, Photography, Film, And Video, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (08/02-26/08)
- Entre Cadavre et Bagatelle, Institut supérieur des Beaux Arts de Besançon, France (07/02-16/03)
- Body Gesture: A Group Exhibition of Feminist Art, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, USA (22/11/2011-28/01/2012)
- Retour à l’intime, la collection Giuliana et Tommaso Setari, La Maison rouge, Paris, France (20/10/12-13/01/2013)
- Passionnément, Palais Fesch, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ajaccio, France (22/12/12-23/03/2013)
2011
- Signed, Sealed, Delivered, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, NY, USA (12/8/11 – 1/14/12)
- Body Gesture, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR, USA (11/22/11 – 1/28/12)
- The Rest, Pepe Cobo y cia, Madrid, Spain (January – March 2011)
- Arkhaiologia, l’archéologie dans l’art contemporain, Centre PasquArt, Bienne, Switzerland (11/09-27/11)
- Prospect.2, Nouvelle-Orléans, USA (22/10-29/01/2012)
- La collection contemporaine du Mahj : un parcours, Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, France (03/07-11/09)
- L’énigme du portrait, Musée d’art contemporain de Marseille, France (01/07-18/09)
- Elle était une fois, Eglise des Cordeliers, Gourdon, France (03/09-02/10)
- Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera since 1870, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA (21/05-18/09)
- Alias, Miesac Fotografii, Photomonth in Krakow 2011, Foundation for Visual Arts, Cracovie, Poland (13-05/12/06)
- Air de Paris, Galerie Christina Wilson, Copenhagen, Denmark (25/02-19/03)
- 10e biennale de Sharjah, UAE (16/03-16/05)
2010
- Feeling what no longer is, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, USA (4/28 – 5/23/10)
- Introducing the Fisher Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, USA (6/25- 9/19/10)
- Memories of the Future, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (25/08-13/02/11)
- Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera since 1870, Tate Modern, London, Grande-Bretagne / (28/05-19/09) / San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA (23/10-09/01/11)
- Son Goruntu - The Last Image, Sanat Limani, Istanbul, Turkey (01/10-31/10)
- Steps into hidden spaces, Kunstmuseum, Thurgau, Switzerland (20/06-19/12)
- In Full Bloom, Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Italy (12/05-30/07)
- Nature pas si morte, Centre culturel André Malraux, Le Bourget, France (06/05-22/05)
- The Talent Show, Target Gallery, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA (10/04-15/08) / PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY, USA (12/12/10 – 4/4/11)
- Memory, Westport Arts Center, Westport, CT, USA (9/24 – 11/28/10)
- Emporte-moi, MAC VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine, France (07/05-septembre)
- Changing the world, Arndt, Berlin, Germany (30/04-31/05)
- Fall out, Gl Holtegaard, Copenhague, Denmark (15/1-21/03)
- I Love You, curated by Pernille Taagaard and Lise Mortensen, ARos Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Århus C, Denmark
- Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA (3/26 – 9/6/10)
2009
- Collection: MOCA’s First 30 Years, Los Angeles, USA (15/11-03/05)
- Emporte-moi, Musée national des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Canada (24/09-11/01/2010)
- Art Protects, Yvon Lambert, Paris, France (05-06 /09)
- Darkside II: Photographic Power and Violence, Disease and Death Photographed, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (05/09-15/11)
- Exhibition Memory Labyrinth. The Faces of Evils 1939-2009, Katowice, Poland
- Dans l’œil du critique, Bernard Lamarche-Vadel et les artistes, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
- Pas nécessaire et pourtant indispensable : 1979-2009 : 30 ans d’art contemporain à Meymac, France
- En quête d’identité, l’Hôtel, Chambre 47, Collège Paul Eluard, St Etienne au Mont, France
- Elles@centrepompidou, Artistes femmes dans les collections du Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (27/05-27/05/2010)
- From Private to Public: Collections, Guggenheim, Bilbao, Espagne, Spain
- The Lens and the Mirror: Self-Portraits from the Collection, 1957-2007, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA
- With You I Want to Live: Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Collection, Museum of Art, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Reading & Writing, Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, USA
- After Images, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA (02/05-26/06)
- Demi-Vérités / Meias Verdades, Centre Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
- Mythologies at Haunch of Venison, Londres, UK (12/03-25/04)
- Regift, Swiss Institute, New York, UK (17/2-4/4)
- Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion, Grey Art Gallery, New York, USA University / Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, USA
2008
- INTIM/ITA : La question de l’intime dans la photographie contemporaine autour de la Collection Neuflize Vie/ABN AMRO, Musée Kampa, Prague, Czech Republic
- Damaged Romanticism : A Mirror of Modern Emotion, Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, USA
- Intimacy, Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Australia
- Quelque chose de perdu, Quimper, France
- Dreaming sleeping, Passage de Retz, Paris, France
- The New Normal, Artist Space, New York / Huarte Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Espagne / The Decker Gallery, Maryland / Institute College of Art, Baltimore / Bureau for Open Culture, Columbus / College of Art & Design Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, Californie / DiverseWorks, Houston, Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario, USA
- Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, Japan
- Double Blind, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
- Exposition Chanel, Hong Kong
- Slightly Unbalanced, organisé par Independent Curators International (ICI), Chicago Cultural Center / Huntington Museum of Art / Rodman Hall Arts Center de St Catharines / Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum, Lafayette / Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, Richmond, USA
2007
- L’art entre en gare, Grand Palais, Paris, France
- On the seam, Socio-political Contemporary Art Museum, Jérusalem, Israel
- Portraits-souvenirs, Salon du collectionneur, Grand Palais, Paris, France
- Foto.Kunst, Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria
- Exhibitionism: An Exhibition of Exhibitions of Works from the Marieluise Hessell Collection, Hessell Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, USA
- Group Exhibition of Gallery Artists, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Miami, USA
- Seeing Things, Dorsky Gallery, Long Island City, USA
- Passion complex, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art of Kanazawa, Japan
- Ligne B, Métro de Toulouse Tisséo, Toulouse, France
- Pensa con i sensi senti con la mente, Giardini della Biennale, Venise, Italy
- Airs de Paris, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- Bertrand Lavier - Sophie Calle, Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse, France
- Arario Gallery, South Korea
- Nouvelle présentation des collections, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- Art & politique, Oeuvres de la collection artistique du Bundestag, Goethe Institut, Bruxelles, Belgium
- Le vif et le furtif, Musée d’art et d’histoire de St Denis, France
- Philosophy of the Bedroom, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, USA
2006
- Cardigan pression, projet maisons de mode, Agnès B, Lille, France
- Les invités s’installent au Château et dînent à l’espace 1789, Conseil Général de Seine St Denis, France
- Art Métropole, Le top 100, Musée des Beaux Arts du Canada, Ottawa, Canada
- Los Angeles, Vädurens servicehus, Stockholm, Sweden
- Strange Powers, Creative Time, New York, USA
- Art, Life & confusion, 47th October Salon, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia
- Transitional Objects, Contemporary Still Life, Neuberger Museum of art, Purchase College, Purchase, USA
- Parcours de la Galerie Ambulante, Queyras, France & Italy
- Premio Biella per l’Incisione 2006, Art in the Age of Anxiety, Museo del Territorio di Biella, Italy
- Noir c’est la vie (… comme un polar), Centre d’art de Meymac, France
- Dormir, rêver… et autres nuits, CAPC, Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, France
- Hadith, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beyrouth, Lebanon
- C’est humain, Atelier d’art Fernand Bourgeois, Apt, France
- Dark Places, Santa Monica Museum of Art, USA
- Ce n’est pas grave, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Saint-Denis, France
2005
- Vidéo Loop, Christophe Milles, Institut Français de Barcelone, Spain
- Triennale de Séoul, The Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea
- Superstars: From Warhol to Madonna, Kunstforum Wien, Vienne, Austria
- Expérience de la durée, Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France
- Colour after Klein, Barbican, Londres, UK
- The shadow, Vestsjaellands Kunstmuseum, Denmark
- At The Mercy of Others : The Politics of Care, City University, New York graduate center gallery, USA
- Strange, Familiar and Unforgotten, Galerie Erna Hécey, Bruxelles, Belgium
- Volti nella folla, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
- Œuvres de la Collection FRAC Basse Normandie, France
- Theorema. Une Collection Privée en Italie, la collection d’Enea Righi, Collection Lambert, Avignon, France
- ROOSEUM Whatever happened to social democracy? Malmo, Sweden
- On Patrol, De Appel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Exposition inaugurale du nouvel espace, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France
- Sophie Calle + Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, Japan
2004
- Realm of the Senses, James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA
- Faces in the Crowd, Whitechapel Gallery, Londres, UK
- L’œuvre de Yona Fischer, Galerie Bezalel, Tel Aviv, Israel
- Beauty Matters, Tina Kim Fine Art, New York, USA
- D’une image qui ne serait pas du semblant, Passage de Retz, Paris, France
- In bed - Images from a Vital Stage, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Japan
- Central Station, Collection Harald Falckenberg, La Maison Rouge, Paris, France
- Perspectives@25 : A quarter-Century of Contemporary Art in Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, USA
- L’œil à l’œuvre, Centre international d’art contemporain du Château de Carros, FRAC Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur, France
- Shutters, University at Buffalo Art Gallery, Buffalo, USA
- Hors d’œuvre : ordre et désordres de la nourriture, CAPC, Bordeaux, France
- True Stories, Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany
- La suite et l’instant, Lycée Robespierre, Arras, France
- Refections, Basiliek, Festival Togeren, Germany
- I need you, Centre PasquArt, Bienne, Switzerland
- Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, USA
- Un privé au triage, Collection de Jean Mairet, Le Triage, Nanterre, France
- Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
- Barbara Gross Gallery, Munich, Germany
- Silent Screams, Difficult Dreams, Borusian Art Gallery, Turkey
- Depicting Love, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
- True lies, Museum Franz Gertsch, SuisseSwitzerland
- La collection Ordonez-Falcon, Une passion partagée, Le Botanique, Bruxelles, Belgium
- Sophie Calle, Espace d'Arts du Lycée Valin, La Rochelle, France
- Elles photographient, Maison de la Photographie, Toulon, France
2003
- Love, Bregenzer Kunstverein / Magasin4, Bregenz, Austria
- Silent Screams Difficult Dreams, Arndt and Partner, Berlin, Germany
- Gegenwärtig : Feldorschung, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hambourg, Germany
- Un été à Toulouse, Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse, France
- Treat Yourself, Science Museum, Londres, UK
- Par le chat d'une aiguille, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France
- Archive et simulation, Lisboa Photo, Portugal
- The furtive gaze, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago
- Warum ! , Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany
- Fantôme du Plaisir, Neue Gallery am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria
- Pertubamento, Galleria Raffella Cortese, Milan, Italy
- Talking pieces, Museum Morsbroich Leverkusen, Germany
- Rituale, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
- Collection, nouvelle présentation, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France
- Fables de l’identité, Collection NSM Vie / ABN AMRO, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, France
- New Hotels for global nomads, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York, USA
- Faiseurs d’histoires, Galerie du théâtre national de Bretagne, Rennes, France
- Une oeuvre, un mois, Université de Provence, Aix en Provence, France
- The Distance Between Me and You, Lisson Gallery, Londres, UK
- Hotel hotel, Landes Museen, Linz, Austria
2002
- Collections modernes et contemporaines, Anatoli, Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, France
- Stories, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
- Iconoclash, Zentrum fur Kunst und Medien Technologie, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Tempéraments de femmes, Musée d’histoire de la ville de Luxembourg
- Photographier, Collection Lambert, Musée d’art contemporain, Avignon, France
- Photographs, video-installations, vidéo, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athenes, Greece
- Utopie quotidiane. L’uomo e suoi sogni nell’arte dal 1960 ad oggi, Padiglione d’arte contemporanea, Milano, Italy
- Moving pictures. Work in photography, film and vidéo, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
- Ce que nous voyons comme si nous le voyions, Orthez, France
- L’art en marche, Bibliothèque et Archives du Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Ottawa, Canada
- Alter ego, Musée d’histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg
- Moi je(ux), Espace Peiresc, Toulon, France
- Récits, Abbaye Saint-André, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Meymac, France
- Public affairs, Kunsthaus, Zürich, Switzerland
- En route, Serpentine Gallery, Londres, UK
- Sans commune mesure, Musée d’Art Moderne Lille Métropole, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France
- Pour faire le portrait d’un oiseau…, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Provence, Grasse, France
- Family, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, USA
- Donald Young Gallery, Chicago, USA
- Self: in material conscience, Fondation Sandretto, Turin, Italy
- Fondation Camille, Journée Internationale de la Femme, Paris, France
- Festival Biarritz, Terre d’images, France
- Taboo – Maericks and hot iron, Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz, Switzerland
2001
- Love me, love me, La Périphérie, Malakoff, France
- Telling tales, Narrative impulses in recent art, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
- Things to come, Galerie Erna Hécey, Luxembourg
- Fresh. Recent Aquisitions, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, USA
- Mis.com, Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
- Portraits d’artistes, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Provence, Grasse, France
- Conversations, Collection du FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Musée Départemental de Gap, France
- Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse, France
- Regards Croisés, Collection du Frac des Pays de la Loire, Montréal, Canada
- Un musée en appartement, Collaboration with Parkett, 1984 to now, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- A private reading, The book as image and object, Senior & Shopmaker Gallery, New York, USA
- Purloined, Artists Space, New York, USA
- Depicting Absence / Implying Presence, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, USA
- Beautiful Productions, Art to play, art to wear, art to own, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK
- Dévoiler, Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, France
- Part Two (1998/1994), Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, USA
- Ellipsis, Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York, USA
- Game Show, MASS MoCA, North Adams, USA
- Conversations, Collaboration entre le FRAC Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur & le Musée Départemental de Gap, France
- A* comme accident, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France
- Un train peut en cacher un autre, sélection d’œuvres du FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Abbaye Saint-André, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Meymac, France
- CTRL (space), Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Photographs : A Decade of Collecting, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
- Televisions, Kunst Sieht Fern, Vienne, Austria
- Arrêt sur image. Zeitgenossische Kunst aus Frankreich, Kunst-Werke Berlin, Institute for Contemporary Art, Germany
- Border Stories, IX Biennale Internazionale di Fotografia, Palazzo Bricherasio, Torino, Italy
- Histoire de cœur, Collection Michel Poitevin, Les Mesnuls, France
- Nouvelle présentation des collections, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- Azerty, un abécédaire autour des collections du FRAC Limousin, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
2000
- Rovaniemi, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, France
- Za muzej sodobne umetnosti Sarajevo, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana,
Museum of Modern Art, Slovenia
- Clichés et banalités photographiques, FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque, France
- Contar historias, Centro cultural, El Monte, Seville, Spain
- Aspectos de la collection, Fundation La Caixa, Madrid, Spain
- Vies parallèles, Ecole des Beaux Arts de Rouen, France
- Absence, Museet for Samtidskunst, Oslo, Norway
- Targeting images, objects + ideas, The Museum of Contemporary
Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, USA
- Dinge in der Kunst des XX.Jahrhunderts, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
- Agents of Change, Biennale de Sydney, 12th international festival of contemporary art, Australia
- Low tech, Rote Fabrik, Shedhalle, Zürich, Switzerland
- Narcisse blessé, autoportraits contemporains 1970-2000, Passage de Retz, Paris, France
- L’empire du temps, mythes et création, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
- Around 1984, a look at art in the eighties, MoMA PS1, New York, USA
- Werk Raum, Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany
- Vanitas Personae, Robert Miller Gallery, New York, USA
- Carpe Diem, la part autobiographique dans l’œuvre d’art, Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes, France
- Ich ist etwas Anderes, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany
- The go-between, Galerie Erna Hécey, Luxembourg
- Où sont les hommes? FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier, France
- La photographie traversée, résonances, croisements, disparitions, XXXI Rencontres internationales de la photographie, Arles, France
1999
- Arts-écriture, Chapelle Sainte-Anne, Arles, France
- Veronica’s Revenge, Contemporary perspectives in the Lambert art collection, Le Casino, Luxembourg ; Musée national d’histoire et d’art, Luxemburg
- Un certain art de vivre, Collections du FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Ata Center for arts, Sofia, Bulgaria
- Souvenir utopie, architektur in der zeitgenössischen französischen Kunst, Stadthaus Ulm, Germany
- Une histoire parmi d’autres, Collection de Michel Poitevin, Frac Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque, France
- O anume arta de a trai, Collection du Frac Languedoc-Roussillon, Muzeul de Arta al Banatului, Timisoara, Romania
- Le sommeil ou quand la raison s’absente, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Switzerland
- Passage : New French Art, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art Sapporo / Setagaya art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
- La casa, il corpo, il cuore, Museum modern Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienne, Austria
- Composite, Art from the late 90s, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway
- True Stories, Barbara Gross Gallery, Munich, Germany
- Museum as Muse, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, USA
- L’écrit, le mot, le texte, Fondation d’Art Contemporain Daniel et Florence Guerlain, France
- Urban Mythologies, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, USA
- Collection de la fondation Cartier, centre culturel de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal
- Arsaevi, Exhibition of the collection, Museo d’arte contemporaneo, Skenderija center, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Collection du Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Sion, Switzerland
- L’art au centre, sélection d’oeuvres du Centre Pompidou, Epicentre, Epinay-Sur-Seine, France
- Necropolis, Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois, Paris, France
- Museum as Muse, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
1998
- L’étonnante gravité des choses simples, Centre d’art contemporain, Meymac, France
- La sphère de l’intime —L’Hôtel, Printemps de Cahors, France
- Paris-Shanghaï, Galerie de France et Xin Dong Cheng, Shanghaï, China
- Cartographos y aventuros, Narradors de historias, Foundation la Caixa, Barcelona, Spain
- Une histoire de circonstances, Galerie l’imagerie, Lannion ; Galerie le Lieu, Lorient ; Galerie le triangle, Rennes, France
- Photographies, Galerie Erna Hécey, Luxemburg
- On the Edge, Private collections in France, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
- Life Lessons, The Judy and Stuart Spence Collection, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, USA
- Fictions Intimes, Espace Electra, Fondation Électricité de France, Paris, France
- Les artistes et l’estampe contemporaine, Ancien Collège des Jésuites et La station, Espace culturel des TUR, Reims, France
- Paris, Galleri F15, Moss, Norway
- FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Colloque de Mirmande, France
- Premises, Invested spaces in visual arts, Architecture and Design from France, Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York, USA
- Collection d’art contemporain de la Fondation La Caixa, Palacio de los Condes de Gabia, Grenade, Spain
- Le fragment, la durée, le montage, La galerie, Quimper, France
- Deep Storage, collecting, storing and archiving in art, Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf, Germany / MoMA PS1, New York / Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, USA
- Words and images, Miami Art Museum, Miami, USA
- Resolution, Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany
- Collections contemporaines, nouvelle présentation, Musée d'art Moderne de Villeneuve d'Ascq, France
1997
- Early Forms, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France
- A vendre, Galerie Erna Hecey, Luxembourg
- Angel, Angel, Kusthalle Wien, Austria / Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic
- 20 ans, Le Consortium, Dijon, France
- Survey Results Show, Oakville Galleries Ontario, Canada
- Floating images of women in Art History, Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan
- Crossings: France – Hawai, Honolulu Academy of Arts, USA
- III Biennale de Cétinié, Montenegro, Yougoslavia
- Trade routes. History and Geography, Biennale de Johannesbourg, South Africa
- Deep Storage. Arsenale der Erinnerung, National Gallery, Berlin / Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
- VIIe Biennale Internationale de Photographie de Turin, Italy
- Art Dealers 2, Galerie La Friche, Marseille, France
- Amours, Fondation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain, Paris, France
- La Photographie contemporaine en France : dix ans d'acquisitions, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- No sex last night, Framed Area, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Fênetre au sud, Galerie ARPS, Cergy-Pontoise, France
- Le Songe de Constantin, Villa Noailles, Hyères, France
- Màsacara i Mirall, Museu d'art contemporani, Barcelone, Spain
- Fenêtre sur Cour, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris, France
- Aux bons enfants, commande de la direction des arts plastiques, Paris, France
- Veronica’s Revenge. Contemporary perspectives in the Lambert art collection, Centre d’art contemporain, Genève, Switzerland
- Editions, Galerie ice box, Athenes, Greece
- Message, positionnen aktuellen Kunst : 5 Kurators, 5 Kunstler, Galerie Schuppenhauer, Cologn, Germany
1996
- NowHere, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
- More than Real, Palazzo Reale, Caserta, Italy
- By night, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France
- Imagined Communities, Oldham Art Gallery, Londres / John Hansard Gallery, University of Southhampton, Colchester / Walsall Museum and Art Gallery Royal Festival Hall, Londres / Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, UK
- Art dans la Ville, Musée de la Mine, Puits Couriot, Saint-Etienne, France
- Carte blanche à Fouad Bellamine (L’Hôtel), Villa Roudani, Casablanca, Morocco
- Dites-le avec des fleurs, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France
- Concours de circonstances, FRAC Centre, Ecole Régionale des Beaux-Arts de Tours, France
- D'une main... l'autre, Galerie Château d'Eau, Toulouse, France
- 1989-1995 : deuxième époque, FRAC Limousin, France
- For the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sarajevo 2000, International Cultural Project, The 1996 Collection, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Fool’s Rain, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Londres, UK
- Voyeurs Delight, Franklin Furnace, New York, USA
- L'expérience du monochrome, la couleur aveugle, Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France
- Le Voyage Extraordinaire, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, France
- Operat 96 : Narrative Art 1970-1990, Ravenne, Italy
- Exposure, Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, USA
1995
- Passions privées. Collections particulières d’art moderne et contemporain, Musée d’art de la Ville de Paris, France
- Art Museum, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
- Els limits del museu, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelone, Spain
- Photography and Beyond: New Expressions in France, The Boca Raton Museum of Art, USA
- Fetishism, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Brighton ; Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham ; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
- Fantômes et autres revenants, Château de Biron, Monpazier, France
- Stereo-Tip, Soros Center, Mestna Galerija, Ljublijana, Slovenia
- Féminin/Masculin : le sexe de l'art, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- The Vision of Art in a Paradoxical World, 4ème Biennale Internationale d’Istanbul, Turkey
1994
- Photography and Beyond, Israel Museum, Jérusalem, Israël / Ludwig Museum, Cologn, Germany / Serpentine Gallery, London, UK / Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, USA / Philadephia Museum of Art, USA / Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, USA / Museum of Contemporary photography, Chicago, USA
- Art and the social conscience, Project row houses, Robert Mc Cain & Co, Houston, USA
- The psycho-pathology of everyday life, Ruth Bloom Gallery, Santa Monica, USA
- Shooting blind, Ezra and Cecile Zilka Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, USA
- Where is Home? Kent gallery, New York, USA
- Donald Young Gallery, Seattle, USA
- Talking Pictures, International Center of Photography, New York, USA
- Züge, Züge. Die Eisenbahn in der zeitgenössischen Kunst, Galerie der Stadt Esslingen; Städtische Galerie, Göppingen, Germany
- … ou les oiseaux selon Schopenhauer, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Agen, France
- Gift, The InterArt Center, New York, USA
- Endstation Sehnsucht, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland
- Some Went Mad... Some Ran Away, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK / Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Etats-Unis / Portalen, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Evidence of Death, The Light Factory, Photographic Arts Center, Charlotte, USA
- Arte in Francia, 1970-1993, Galeria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy
1993
- Memories, facts and lies, Blum Helman Gallery, New York, USA
- Bolande, Calle, Munoz, Scott, Wooster Gardens, New York, USA
- Building a collection. Part 1, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA
- Über Leben, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany
- Camaras de Friccion, Galeria Luis Adelantado, Valencia, Spain
- Strange Hotel, Aahus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark
- Histoire de voir, Château de Villeneuve, Vence, France
- Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, USA
- Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York, USA
- Nachtschattengewächse: The nightshade family, Fridericianum, Cassel, Germany
- Documentario 2, Spazio Opos, Milan, Italy
- Doubletake: Collective Memory and current art, Kunsthalle, Vienna, Austria
1992
- Regards multiples, Acquisitions de la Société des amis du Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- Le Portrait dans l’art contemporain, Musée d’art moderne et d’art contemporain, Nice, France
- 13 critics, 26 photographs, Centre d’art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain
- The power of the City, the City of Power, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
- France : Troisième Génération, Exposition Universelle de Séville, Spain
- Bedroom Eyes: Room with a View, California State University, Fullerton, USA
- Theoretically Yours, Chiesa di S. Lorenzo, Aoste, Italy
- Avstand, Muséet fôr Nutids Konst, Helsinki, Finland
- Doubletake: Collective Memory and Contemporary Art, Hayward Gallery, London, UK
1991
- L’esprit nouveau, Une exposition de l’art contemporain en France, Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon, France
- Les Couleurs de l'Argent, Musée de la Poste, Paris, France
- Too French, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong ; Hara museum of contemporary art, Tokyo, Japan
- Donald Young Gallery, Seattle, USA
- Storie, Galerie Casolli, Milan, Italy
- Lato Sensu, 17 artistes français Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Kunstverein & Kampnagelfabrik, Hambourg ; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mulhouse ; Institut Français, Fribourg, Germany
- Hommage à Georges Boudaille, Gare d'Austerlitz, Paris, France
- The Interrupted Life, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA
- Grandes lignes. Quand l'art entre en gare, Gare de l'Est, Paris, France
- La photographie dans la collection, Beaux-Arts, Nîmes, France
- Carnegie International 1991, Carnegie Museum of art, Pittsburgh, USA
- Dislocations, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- L'amour de l'art, Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, France
- Photography Outlook, Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, USA
- Individualités, 14 Contemporary Artists from France, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
- Erotic Desire /Erotisch Verlangen in de Fotografie, Perskpektief Center for Photography, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- Vanitas, Galerie Crousel-Robelin ; Bama, Paris, France
1990
- Autour de René Payant, Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, Canada
- Sophie Calle, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Stephen Prina, Trans-Avant-Garde Gallery, San Francisco, USA
- Strip-tease de l'Intime, Galerie Urbi & Orbi, Paris, France
- Exposed, Vivian Horan Fine Art, New York, USA
- Donald Young Gallery, Chicago, USA
- Images in transition: photographic representation towards the 90's, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto / The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan
- Seven Obsessions, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK
- Beyond the Photographic Frame, Mito Arts Foundation, Mito, Japan
- Keys for a building, Galerie Crousel-Robelin / Bama, Paris, France
- Modèles Déposés : 1, Galerie du C.A.U.E., Limoges, France
- The Ready-made Boomerang, Biennale de Sydney, Australia
1989
- Painting/ Object/ Photograph, Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston
- L'Invention d'un art, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- Contemporary European Art, First Bank Skyway Gallery, Minneapolis, USA
- Buena Vista, John Gibson Gallery, New York, USA
- Monat der Fotografie, Kommunale Galerie im Leinwandhaus, Francfort, Germany
- Fictions, Aéroport de Mirabel, Montréal, Canada
- Culture Medium, International Center of Photography, New York, USA
- Histoires de Musée, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France
- Nos Années 80, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Jouy-en-Josas, France
- Tenir l'Image à Distance, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, Canada
- Shifting Focus, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol / Serpentine Gallery, Londres, UK
- Frontières, Galerie Christine Le Chanjour, Nice, France
- At face value, Kettle's Yard Gallery, Cambridge, Grande-Bretagne ; Third Eye, Glasgow, Ecosse, UK
1988
- Tendances Actuelles de la Photographie en France, Centre national de la Photographie, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
- La Photo à la Rescousse de l'Art, Centre du Lubéron, Apt, France
- Craig Cornelius Gallery, New York, UK
- Art & Text, First National Bank, Minneapolis, UK
- Au-delà de l'Image—Beyond the image. Fotofest’88, Houston, UK
1987
- Scared to Breath, Galerie Perspektief, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- Galerij de lege Ruimte, Bruges, Belgium
- The New Who's Who, Hoffman/Borman Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
1986
- Des photographes et le cardigan pression, Galerie du Jour - Agnès B., Paris, France
- ‘F’ Four French, Lang & O'Hara Gallery, New York, USA
- French Survey. Center for the Arts, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia
1985
- Kunst mit Eigen-Sinn, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria
- Acquisitions de la Société des amis du Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- Acquisitions 1985, Fondation Camille, Paris, France
- Suite vénitienne pour 3000 stars et médias de rêve, Palais Gallieni, Bordeaux, France
1984
- La Chambre, Centre national de la Photographie, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
- Photographie contemporaine en France, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- Post-Olympic Art, L.A.C.E., Los Angeles, USA
- XXIX Salon de Montrouge. Art Contemporain : peinture, sculpture, dessin. Montrouge, France
1983
- À Pierre & Marie, 36 rue d'Ulm, Paris, France
- Il n'y a pas à proprement parler une histoire..., Maison de la Culture, Rennes, France
1982
- Le Poids des mots, Le choc des photos, Au fond de la cour à droite, Chagny, France
- Réseau A.R.T.-P.R.O.S.P.E.C.T., Paris, France
- Une autre photographie, Maison de la Culture de Créteil et du Val de Marne, Créteil, France
- Du Livre, Musée des Beaux-Arts et Bibliothèque municipale, Rouen, France
1981
- Erweiterte Fotografie. 5. International Biennale, Vienna, Austria
- Acquisitions Récentes des Collectionneurs Genevois. Aspects de l’art contemporain aujourd’hui, 1970-1980, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland
- Galerie Zabriskie, Paris, France
- Autoportraits photographiques, 1898-1981, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France
1980
- Une Idée en l'Air, The Clocktower, New York, USA
- XIème Biennale de Paris, Manifestation internationale des jeunes artistes, ARC, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
Born in 1953 in Paris, Sophie Calle is a writer, a conceptual artist, a photograph, a movie director or even detective. She might be a little of each, according to the characters that she interprets, the rituals she imagines, the parts of her life that she tells and the feelings that she shares. The artist often explores the investigations methods and her work , most of the time, consists in the association between photography and text.
Sophie Calle creates her own game rules, in order to "Make life better", to give life a structure. For her first project in 1979 she decides to follow a stranger, and this chase brings her to Venice. " Suite Venitienne" is the result of this shadow.
For most of her works it is only in a second part that she leads them into the art sphere. Her installations are the conclusion and the effect of situations which are entirely staged by the artist and lived in an autobiographic way.
Talking to Strangers
by Iwona Blawick
What happens when two radically opposed artistic traditions collide? Take the work of art as the reclining nude, a figure in a picture. Its subject is passive, the aesthetic object of the artist’s gaze, part of a pictorial tradition that dominated painting from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Now take the work of art as a body in space. Its subject is the artist’s body and that of anyone entering the space of the work transformed into active participant. Here we recall the radical propositions of performance art of the 1960s and 1970s. It is an unlikely fusion of these traditions that characterizes Sophie Calle’s paradigmatic work of 1979, The Sleepers. It is also why we can regard her work as a new kind of figuration, one that offers social interaction.
‘I’d set up a small lab ... I’d met Gloria Friedman who had an enlarger, while I had a basement. We took turns. One morning, she woke me up so that I could have my turn. Because she didn’t feel up to going back home, she asked me if she could lie down in my bed. She must have said something like: “The sheets are warm, it’s nice …” I probably said something like: “That would be fun, a bed that’s always got someone in it”. Calle contacted friends, acquaintances and strangers and asked whether they would sleep in her bed and allow her to photograph them.
‘I intended my bedroom to become a constantly occupied space for eight days, with sleepers succeeding one another at regular intervals.’
The black and white photographs of The Sleepers are interspersed with short written accounts of each volunteer and Calle’s exchange with them. They can be regarded as models in the classic sense – they recline and they are pictured. Yet Calle’s images of them are neither aesthetic nor erotic; they appear documentary, like evidence compiled by a detective or a psychologist. Each subject is also a participant. Although the artist asks them to make a work, her invitation requires only that they rest. They act by agreeing to enter the intimate space of the artist’s bed with all its connotations of the body in sickness and in health. There is the frisson of sex, the taboo of hygiene. To be horizontal is also to be vulnerable, incapacitated. There is a strong element of risk for the participants – one, a babysitter, is frightened and phones her boyfriend to ask his advice – and for Calle, whose motivation could be misinterpreted – ‘He tells me he came because he thought there would be an orgy’.
By asking her subjects to sleep, Calle allows them a measure of autonomy, allowing them to disappear appear into their unconscious. When they awake they look as if they have returned from a journey, silent, blurry-eyed, acclimatizing to the light and the strange situation in which they find themselves. Both Calle and the sleepers are vulnerable: she is sharing her bedroom with strangers. They are asleep in the bed of a woman they do not know. Each has made a pact of trust.
The Sleepers offers a paradigm for understanding Calle’s future oeuvre: making a proposal that triggers a sequence of unpredictable events, and involves a degree of risk, even danger; bringing strangers temporarily into the realms of intimacy; and documenting the consequences through text and image. The bed itself has been a recurrent motif, with its attendant connotations of the erotic and of the unconscious. Above all, Calle enters into temporary agreements with strangers that require mutual trust. It is this aspect of her work that suggests a political and ethical dimension.
Taking up the camera initially gave Calle a way of ‘getting about and discovering the city’.4 Being behind a lens offers a protective distance, the detachment of the observer also crucial to the flâneur. In 1980, Calle agreed to participate in a show at the Fashion Moda Gallery in the South Bronx. ‘Right away I stumbled upon a simple idea: playing with the fear created by that neighbourhood and its ghetto aspect.’5 Calle stopped passers-by on the streets of the Bronx between 2 and 5 p.m. and asked them to take her somewhere of their choice.
Following New York State’s bankruptcy in the 1970s, the Bronx had suffered unprecedented levels of unemployment, dereliction and violence. One of her guides comments, ‘when a white person comes to the neighbourhood, it is either a policeman, a dope peddler or it is a mistake’.
Calle recounts each encounter in a framed text. Beside it is an image of the destination selected by each passerby – the ruin of what was someone’s home; a lone sapling tree.
Calle used the terms of an enquiry to offer a framework for interaction. Despite the ‘shield’ offered by her camera Calle does not succumb to the opportunism of photo journalism. Her subjects shape the narrative structure of the work by determining the route the artist follows; and they select what she should portray of their terrain. Calle’s youth, gender and white skin make her a potential target; yet no one abuses her trust. Each is given their voice and their opportunity to memorialize a loss or find some expression of hope in this hostile landscape. The massed ranks of the irredeemable are individuated, given back their humanity by making manifest their search for hope. The night before the show opens the gallery is broken into and all the works are covered in graffiti – Calle leaves the tags on her work simply remarking on an intervention by ‘an unexpected collaborator’.
‘I spend the days with this blotched blotter before me and I read the correspondents’
confidences’ André Breton et Philippe Soupault
The importance of chance in Calle’s work reiterates a preoccupation that runs from Surrealism through the psychogeographic dérives of the Situationists. Chance brings with it the spontaneous, the unexpected and the irrational. As Calle has commented, ‘I like being in control and I like losing control. Opening the door to the unknown, it can also offer the solution as to what to make next. In 1983 the artist found an address book, photocopied it and returned it anonymously to its owner. Some time later he was to read descriptions of himself in the French newspaper, Libération, solicited by Calle from the friends whose contact details she had copied. As with The Sleepers and The Bronx this is also a portrait but the subject is absent. Calle pieces together different perspectives provided by a random group of people who are defined by knowing one individual. As with Breton and Soupault, reading private correspondence from the ink traces on a blotter, there is something voyeuristic, even predatory about this and other works in which Calle has followed and photographed strangers (or their rooms) without their knowledge or permission (Suite Venitienne, 1980/ The Hotel, 1981). ‘I would get to know this man. I would try to find out who he was without ever meeting him …’ There is also the sexual frisson of pursuing the obscure object of desire. Might the appeal of this work to the female viewer lie in the pleasure of this role reversal?
The violation of privacy would certainly have appealed to the anti- bourgeois ethos of the surrealists; someone who is neither topical nor a celebrity, becomes, albeit anonymously, the unwitting topic of a daily newspaper article. If readers hoped for salacious or unpleasant disclosures however, they were to be disappointed. Those providing the descriptions were literary, funny, insightful, yet discreet. Calle’s experiment demon- strates the affection and tolerance we have for each other’s idiosyncrasies and the levels of decorum we adopt when making a public address.
‘The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.’ Sol Lewitt
Just as conceptual artists accorded idea and process equal status, Calle presents the concept of the work as an establishing statement outlining the terms of the experiment and the circumstances for what follows. The results of the initial concept then unfold as a journal or narrative. Experiments require a form of notation; similarly performances and happenings became manifest beyond the moment of their execution through photography. Accompanying Calle’s written commentary is a photographic record of events. Her images have a snapshot quality that looks expedient and intimate. She nearly always pictures people or spaces but her images have neither the drama of reportage nor the aesthetic of the tableaux.
Anatoli (1984) takes the form of a letter addressed to ‘My love’ It continues, ‘I boarded the Trans-Siberian in Moscow, on my way to Vladivostok. It was October 29, 1984, 2.20 p.m. I was in car 7, com- partment 6 … The other traveller was in berth 4. I sat down and waited for him. At 2.30 he walked in.’11 This suspenseful, Hitchcockian opening is enthralling, and as the train pulls out the reader gets on board. In the account that follows Calle describes her life in the train compartment with
a 68 year-old Russian man called Anatoli. They have no grasp of each other’s language. To his annoyance she is also unable to play chess and he tries, unsuccessfully, to swap her for another passenger. He drinks vodka and snores profusely. Yet they establish a routine; they look after one another. Apparently insurmountable barriers disappear through their mutual acts of civility. Her journey is not described in scenic terms; rather it is a wry account of how mutual incomprehension evolves towards an unexpectedly nuanced relationship. Calle’s epistolary account is enlarged and presented as a wall text. The photographs of Anatoli and their brief encounter are unframed and arranged on a table where the visitor is invited to sit and sift through them. Calle invites her viewer to act as witness: to the private language of a love letter, to a personal encounter in a train carriage and to translate these personal relations into the public sphere. This is to engage in what Nicolas Bourriaud, a decade later, identifies as ‘relational’ art, ‘an art that takes as its theoretical horizon the sphere of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an autonomous and private symbolic space’.
Although Calle’s work operates in the sphere of human relations, her project is neither emotionally expressive nor sentimental. Her writings are characterized by a comic detachment, observing rather than interpreting. Driving her work is a desire to find a connection between people and to identify a locus of aspiration that is essentially utopian. This often evolves through the process of a journey. From the expedition to the road movie, this is a narrative form that presupposes a quest, the search for Mandalay, El Dorado, Shangri-la, Hollywood. This is always tempered however, by the artist’s acute awareness that the beckoning ideal is a mirage. Los Angeles (1984) reiterates the strategy she evolved in The Bronx. Where the Bronx is synonymous with fear of the ghetto, Los Angeles symbolizes a form of Occidentalism, and its concomitant association with pioneering. Commissioned to create a piece about the city, Calle ‘… decided to ask people a single question: “Since Los Angeles is literally the city of the angels, where are the angels?”’
The pursuit of hope as expressed by her Californian guides, leads Calle variously to a liquor store, a family living room, and to one man’s conclusion that ‘the whole city is a monument to their failure to appear’.13 If Calle is a sceptic she also demonstrates how giving up on the search for an ideal, whether it be true love, a social aspiration, or even a political ideology –leads to artistic stasis and the impoverishment of the public arena.
She herself is challenged to ‘improve life in New York City’ by the author Paul Auster. Having inspired a character in his 1992 novel, Leviathan, Calle asked him ‘to invent a fictive character which I would attempt to resemble’. He decides instead to send her instructions to be carried out on the streets of New York. These involve smiling at and talking to strangers, helping beggars and homeless people and cultivating a spot. The terms of the ‘social contract’ that is at the heart of her work are here, set by someone else, enabling Calle to relinquish agency - ‘I like to lose control’.
In 1994, on the streets of Manhattan, Calle sets to work. However disingenuous her smiles and overtures to conversation may be, she scores a not inestimable return on her performance: ‘Results of the Operation – 125 smiles given for 72 received … 154 minutes of conversation’. She also decorates a phone booth, furnishing it with flowers, refreshments and a pad for the public’s comments. These range from appreciation to abuse.
The project is an act, a work of fiction and an anthropological experiment. It emerges that beggars would rather smoke than eat; that men ‘can be pigs’; and that most social dialogue takes the form of platitude. But the mission is broadly successful. Art is not instrumentalized, rather its instrumentalization becomes the subject of the work of art. ‘Sophie Calle’ as a character envisioned by Paul Auster and performed by the artist, makes people happy.
In 1996 she embarked on the third of her psychogeographic city tours titled The Detachment. ‘I visited places in Berlin where the symbols of East Germany have been removed. I asked passers-by to describe the objects that once filled these empty spaces.’15 She photographed the location of each public sign or monument detached after the 1989 reunification of East and West Germany and recorded people’s descriptions of what was there. Despite their confidence in recollecting shape, material or colour, they are often visually inaccurate. The emblem of a dove removed from a high rise is variously remembered as ‘bronze’, ‘white’ and ‘stainless steel’. The absence of the symbols that once defined the public realm in ideological terms, also elicits sadness, annoyance and relief – few are indifferent. On the removal of a GDR insignia, a person comments,
‘The instruments of utopia have now disappeared. All that’s left is the utopia, but an empty one. We only see the void’. The monuments and signs that are part of the fabric of the city and that become invisible with familiarity are, paradoxically brought sharply into focus by their absence. Calle elicits reflections from the citizens of East Berlin on how ideology shaped not only their urban environment but also their sense of identity. Most critically they mourn the loss of ‘the possibility of remembering’. With the removal of the propagandist symbols of the state, history appears to have been erased. Calle relocates it within the memories of her subjects. The unreliability of their visual recall makes this history a subjective one, giving it a veracity and a complexity that transforms it into a narrative of lived experience. In the new dawn of unification, there is no illusion about the triumph of capitalism. ‘We could just leave things as they are. As traces. Rather than make way for Coca-Cola signs’.
A work where her subjects were unable to talk back generated a fifteen year crisis in its making. In 1988, invited by an American bank to make a project, the artist gained access to the surveillance films taken by hidden cameras, of clients using cash machines. Although struck by the strange betrayal of trust that these covert films represent, by the mysterious beauty of the portraits they make and by the occasional crime they document but cannot actually prevent, she can’t work out what to do with them. Years pass. Calle interviews tellers, she photographs money, she talks to security agents and policemen. In 1994 she asks Jean Baudrillard to help out. She visits a hypnotist. Still nothing. In 2003 she decides to make a video about all these failures and to show the original photographs of the cash machine’s users. Frustrated by the silence of these strangers and by the abstraction of money itself - ‘Is it because money is an enabler that I am unable to find an angle on it?’16 – Calle struggles to bring the closed-circuit encounter between a person and a machine into the subjective terms of her authorship. Unfinished (2003) is another journey, towards the elusive act of creation itself. If social interaction is one engine driving Calle’s work, autobiography is the other. The epic Take Care of Yourself (2007) takes as its muse a former lover. On receiving his email ending their relationship she takes literally his suggestion that she should take care of herself, by asking for professional assistance. Making the letter the transitional object for the locus of anger and loss, she commissioned over 100 women whose jobs touch on human relations, to give their professional response to it. Some provide literary, psychological and legal analysis; others use their creative skills as dancers, singers, storytellers or performers, to make an alchemical transformation of the letter into multiple works of art. The operatic scale of this installation, initially presented at the French pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale, encompasses moving image, sound and printed matter. On being invited to represent France, Calle advertised for a curator; the winning applicant was the artist, Daniel Buren. Together they collated Calle’s films, recordings, photographs and transcripts of the women’s professional responses, into a Borgesian library, a labyrinth of text, sound and image.
Take Care of Yourself proceeds from a betrayal of trust represented by rejection and exacerbated by its delivery via the remote proxy of the email. Calle mirrors this act of displacement by employing others to analyse or perform the source of her anguish. Neither mawkish nor vengeful, this composite work presents a remarkable testament to the poise, wisdom and artistry of 107 women. This work of art proceeds from Calle’s transference and sublimation of pain and emerges through the symbolic acts of her female chorus.
While each contribution is characterized by absolute tact and professional composure, it is difficult to resist the comic deflation visited on the self- regard of Calle’s male muse. By contrast, the power of Couldn’t Capture Death (2007) rests in an almost unbearable use of humour to mark the trauma of death. Taking the form of a wall text, Calle portrays her mother by recounting the arrangements she makes as she prepares to die. The organizing structure of this, perhaps Calle’s most profound written work, takes each distinct action as the final one of its kind: ‘The last journey’, ‘her last party’, ‘a last poem’. Throughout this devastating yet elegiac epitaph, Calle enumerates the activities that elevate us above mere existence: looking at the sea, reading, listening to Mozart. The significance of perceiving nature, immersion in culture and of recourse to the comic –
‘her epitaph: I’m getting bored already!’ is not only a way of paying tribute to this central figure in her life. It is also a testament to how the pleasure, the continuity and necessity of these acts, transcend mortality. If her mother’s last breath evaded capture, this work of art can be said to have captured her life.
Although enacted in 2005 the final work in the Whitechapel exhibition, which this book accompanies, is recuperative. Where and When? Berck (2008) is the name of a seaside town in France that has thirteen hospitals, its beach the site of convalescence. Having persuaded Maud Kristen, a clairvoyant, to use her powers to propose a course of action, Calle travels to Berck at the suggestion of Maud’s cards. Once there, she reports by phone on her encounters, which Maud offers to ‘the cosmos’ for interpretation and guidance as to how to proceed. For Calle, ‘It is restful. Obeying rules, controlled wandering, the relief of not having to judge events … everything becomes a sign and so glows with grace’.17 A woman invites Calle to take deep breaths of air and to note its singularity in different locations. The cards indicate that she should find a memorial to two dead brothers who had loved boats and challenges. The monument she finds is blank. At this moment she receives a phone message from a friend, one of two brothers who love boats and challenges and whose surname is Berque. On her way home to Paris, she buys a souvenir for Maud from a café called Succès berckois. Maud comments, ‘I just wanted to admire the coincidences’. The work appears as a book where flipping the pages shows the cards in action; and a film. The final image is a road leading into the sea. For the artist and the viewer who accompanies her, this bland coastal town has unexpectedly offered a breath of fresh air, life instead of death.
Calle adopts multiple identities as author, performer and character. She invents or invites games and rituals to pass the time and initiate social exchange that in turn beguile and entrance her audience. Behind the artifice of the mask and the arbitrary structure of an instruction, lies the messy emotional truth of loss, disappointment, or frustrated expectation. The catalyst and consequence of many of her investigations is failure. Yet her unswerving application to following the rules of her own protocols and the remarkable responses that she elicits from her protagonists, suggest what should be necessary, ethical conditions of social life.
