Sophie Calle, France's most renowned conceptual artist, is opening her first major UK exhibition in nearly two decades at Turner Contemporary in Margate. Now 72, Calle has built her provocative artistic career on intimate yet detached works that explore absence and document the lives of others and herself, using photography, video and installations that often blur ethical and emotional boundaries.

The exhibition, titled "Something Missing?", features works spanning from 1986 to 2024, centred on themes of absence including her late parents, a former lover, and abandoned ideas. Calle began her artistic practice in 1980 by following strangers without their knowledge, an approach she continued through other provocative projects such as posing as a hotel maid to document guests' belongings, inviting strangers to sleep in her bed, and filming her mother's final moments in 2006. She became an artist at age 26 partly to impress her father, a doctor and art collector, and has continued creating despite briefly retiring after his death in 2015, describing herself as increasingly preoccupied with death.