Sophie CALLE

Maternité, 2018

Digital photograph, text,wooden frames

Edition of 5

Courtesy Perrotin

share artist info

photograph : © Jean-Baptiste Mondino

Artist's studio

Translation of the work in English :

I never wanted to have children. But, as I was insisting upon this, someone pointed out that I behaved toward Souris as though I were his mother. It was true, I was enchanted by his grace. He was the funniest, the smartest. His portrait was my screen saver. Whenever, as they always do, parents showed pictures of their children, I, not to be outdone, pulled out one of him. And so I decided to take the next step and give birth to my cat. I asked my vet for advice in order to simulate a pregnancy for the usual gestation period (58 to 63 days) and purchased a small black and white stuffed toy. I never went through with it. Was it because summer was the wrong time to be wearing a fake belly? Or because I feared being made fun of by my friends in the village? In the winter, I was traveling, hanging shows… As I kept postponing motherhood, Souris grew old. It no longer made any sense.

Autobiographies, 1988-today

Since 1988, Sophie Calle has been enriching an ongoing series called Autobiographies. Each work of this series is composed of a picture and a text, presented under the form of framed pieces, wooden boxes or light boxes. Through her photographs and writings, she cultivates contrasts between a cold technical representation and an intimate but distanced content. Gathered in a book entitled True Stories, this series displays a compilation of fragments of Sophie Calle’s life, thus enrolling the viewer into a game in which his position oscillates between that of the voyeur and that of the detective.

Autobiographies inevitably raises the question of the heuristic scope of an accumulation of texts and images, a topic the artist explored in other series evoking pastiche documentary or inquiry work, such as The Hotel, a series revealing the content of guests’ rooms in a venetian hotel. Indissociably weaving together facts and fictions about her own life in Autobiographies, the artist takes on the roles of narrator and agent in this piece of visual literature. This blurring of the boundaries between the author and its subject lies at the heart of Sophie Calle’s artistic process.

Exhibitions :
Was Bleibt, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, Ravensburg, Allemagne, 2020
Dead End, Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France, 2018
Seoul Photo Festival, Seoul Museum of Contemporary Art, Samcheong-dong, Corée du Sud, 2020

PERROTIN

The New York gallery is closed for Memorial Day Weekend

We will reopen on Tuesday, May 30 with normal hours, 10am-6pm

visit website