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Sophie Calle’s provocative career explored in first major UK show in 20 years
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.
In short
- French conceptual artist Sophie Calle opens major UK show at age 72
- Her controversial work documents strangers' lives and explores death and absence
- Calle shows no regrets about ethically ambiguous artistic practices
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The exhibition can be defended as a serious exploration of how people make meaning from absence, grief and memory. Calle’s intimate, sometimes unsettling methods challenge audiences to think about privacy and observation, while the range of work gives viewers a chance to assess those questions for themselves.
The case against
The work can be criticised for turning other people’s private lives and vulnerable moments into artistic material, sometimes without their knowledge or meaningful consent. Even when it raises questions about intimacy and ethics, that does not resolve whether the people documented bear too much of the cost for the artist’s project.
Explained simply
Sophie Calle is a French conceptual artist whose work uses photography, film and installations to explore private lives and personal experience. She often turns everyday actions into artworks, including following strangers or recording the belongings they leave behind.
Calle’s projects have raised questions about privacy, consent and the boundary between art and real life. Her work also draws on absence and loss, including relationships and the deaths of people close to her.
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Originally published by The Guardian as “‘Sometimes I do cruel things – and it’s worth it’: the fabulous shameless art of the great Sophie Calle”.