Sophie Calle is a French artist you might enjoy. It is fair to say that she and Tracey Emin have some things in common - tonally at least, their art is reminiscent of the other. Rather than recounting a back catalogue of her (prolific) efforts, installations, projects and exhibitions, I will direct you here; and make notes on a few favourite works.
Take Care of Yourself, 2007
At the 2007 Venice Biennale, Sophie Calle showed her piece Take Care of Yourself, named after the last line of the message her ex had left her. Calle had asked dozens of women—including a parrot and a hand puppet—to interpret the break-up e-mail and presented the results in the French pavilion. "Calle took the e-mail, and the paralyzing confusion that accompanies the mind’s failure to comprehend heartbreak, and distributed it to 107 women of various professions, skills and talents to help her understand it – to interpret, analyze, examine and perform it. The result of this seemingly obsessive, schoolyard exercise is paradoxically one of the most expansive and telling pieces of art on women and contemporary feminism to pass through (the major art centres) in recent years".
Leviathan (with Paul Auster), 1992
Calle asked writer and filmmaker Paul Auster to "invent a fictive character which I would attempt to resemble"and served as the model for the character Maria in Auster’s novel Leviathan (1992). This mingling of fact and fiction so intrigued Calle that she created the works of art created by the fictional character, which included a series of color-coordinated meals.
The Blind, 1986
Calle interviewed blind people, and asked them to define beauty. Their responses were accompanied by her photographic interpretation of their ideas of beauty, and portraits of the interviewees.
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