Artist Sophie Calle is something of a sleuth. The French conceptual artist, who works primarily in photography, writing and video, is fascinated with the lives of others. However, she also hyper-fixates on her own life, embellishing narratives, offering insight into her intimate life and exposing details that a person normally would share only with a trusted friend.
This might sound like the selfie-focused social media world we live in, but Calle has been doing this sort of work since the late 1970s. Walker Art Center Chief Curator Henriette Huldisch made that connection and decided to bring Calle to Minneapolis. The exhibition, titled “Overshare,” suggests that Calle’s work, specifically her work that offers strangers a peek into her personal life, predicted the rise of social media long before any of us had smartphones.
The exhibition includes some of her classic early works that put her on the map, such as “The Sleepers,” 1979, in which she, with consent, photographed people sleeping in her bed, and “The Hotel,” 1981, for which she worked as a chambermaid at a hotel in Venice, examining the lives of hotel guests through their objects. The show also includes newer works, such as homages to her parents who passed away, and “Voir La Mer,” 2011, for which she traveled to Istanbul to film and photograph Turkish migrant workers and their families as soon as they saw the sea for the first time.
Her projects touch on topics such as public-private boundaries, voyeurism and surveillance, and more specifically offer insight into the emotional vulnerability of the human experience.
The Minnesota Star Tribune talked with Huldisch to learn more about her interest in Calle and a little about the Hamburg, Germany-born, Minneapolis-based Huldisch. This interview has been edited for clarity.
French conceptual artist Sophie Calle’s photograph “Mother-Father,” 2018, is part of her survey at the Walker Art Center. (Courtesy the artist and Fraenkel Gallery)
Q: What about Sophie Calle’s work moved you?
A: I have long been an admirer of her work. I think when I saw her at the Venice Biennale in 2007, when she represented France, I saw one of her most famous works called “Take Care of Yourself” [in the piece, Calle received an email telling her it was over, and the email ends with “Take care of yourself.” In response, Calle asked 107 women to analyze, comment on, dance it, sing that email, help her understand]. I thought it was so fierce and so brave and funny and over the top and poignant.
Q: The name of the survey is “Overshare,” which references the idea that people share too much and too often about themselves on social media. Was that intentional?
