Original Text of the work in english
On my birthday I always worry that people will forget me. In 1980, to relieve myself of this anxiety, I decided that every year, if possible on 9 October, I would invite to dinner the exact number of people corresponding to my age, including a stranger chosen by one of my guests.
I did not use the presents received on these occasions. I kept them as tokens of affection. In 1993, at the age of forty, I put an end to this ritual.
– Bouquet of flowers
– Book by Mario Vargas Llosa: La Maison verte (Editions NRF Gallimard)
– Construction by David Rochline (mirror, gilded wood, marshmallows, chocolates, candies and plastic doll)
– Pair of Jean-Charles Brosseau cream-coloured knitted-cotton gloves
– Bottle of eau de vie, labelled Pour les 28 ans de Sophie
– Compass
– Book by Henry Miller: Insomnia ou le diable en liberté (Editions Stock)
– Red satin mini-dress, decorated with black plastic grapes, and a red mask
– Miniature chair in blue Formica
– Vedette washing machine
– Black mask
– Twenty-eight fruit-flavoured lollipops
– Photograph by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, entitled Le rêve éveillé
– Bottle of Moët & Chandon champagne
– Book by Maurice Achard and Anne-Marie Métailié: Les années soixante
en noir et blanc (Editions Amm)
– Beige umbrella with a handle in the shape of a dog’s head
– Petal-shaped ashtray that can be disassembled
– Twenty-eight drawing pads
– Twenty-eight earrings
– Book by Henri-Alexis Baatsch: Roman Polonais (Editions Pierre Bordas et Fils)
– Book by Marie José Parra-Aledo: Images fugitives (Editions Pierre Bordas et Fils)
– Four white buttons
Remarks: All twenty-eight guests appeared. The stranger gave me the black mask. Because of its irresistible utility, the washing machine is represented by a manufacturer’s guarantee.
By giving me this present, my clever mother managed to subvert the ritual.
In 1993, on her 40th birthday, she exhibited the accumulation of objects she was offered in 15 different medicine cabinets. Conceived for Art Now 14 at the Tate Gallery in 1998, this sculptural installation displays heteroclite assemblages, and contains objects as diverse as chocolates, purses, artworks by Christian Boltanski and Annette Messager, keychains, a washing machine… In the book she dedicated to Sophie Calle, the sociologist Anne Sauvageot suggested that this ongoing accumulation process was mimicking several pathologies: collector’s mania, infantile obsession, fetishistic belief, bourgeois ostentation… In Birthday ceremony, the conceptual artist transcends banality and turns a mundane ritual into a creative space. This work, echoing later ones such as her Autobiographies series (1988-today), is typical of Sophie Calle’s artistic process, intermingling reality and fiction, triviality and art, individual and social identities.