Sophie Calle

Biography

French conceptual artist Sophie Calle has redefined through personal investigation the terms and parameters of subject/object, the public versus the private, and role playing. In her conceptual projects, Calle immerses herself in examinations of voyeurism, intimacy and identity.

In the process of secretly investigating, reconstructing or documenting strangers' lives, Calle manipulates situations and individuals, and often adopts guises. Thus, in the act of pursuing a stranger to Venice, or taking the position of a hotel chamber maid to surreptitiously observe the guests, Calle conditions and recasts her own identity for that period of time. The documents or "evidence" that result from these conceptual projects are presented as photographs, photo-text installations and bookworks.

Calle's works often focus on the nature of desire, and on the relationships between the artist/observer and the objects of her investigations, as in her sole video project Double-Blind. Produced in collaboration with Gregory Shepard, this conceptual road movie was released theatrically in Europe as a feature film entitled No Sex Last Night.

Sophie Calle was born in 1953 in Paris. Her work has been shown at the 1990 Sydney Biennial and the 1993 Biennial Exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and has been included in exhibitions at the Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany; Musée d'Art Moderne de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Musee d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; De Appel, Amsterdam; the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; The Clocktower and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Hayward Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Serpentine Gallery, London, and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel. She was the subject of an issue of Parkett magazine (Issue #36) in 1993.

Calle lives in Paris.