Reflection - Sophie Calle Exhibition Whitechapel

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/sophie-calle-talking-to-strangers

In December I decided to visit a friend with the ulterior motive of going to the Whitechapel Gallery to see Sophie Calle’s exhibition ‘Talking to Strangers’. I discovered Calle a few years ago whilst researching conceptual artists for a project. I returned to her during my research on women artists using text and photography earlier this year.



My friend did not have any knowledge of her work so I was excited to take her.

The Whitechapel exhibition is the first retrospective of the French conceptualist Calle's work in the UK. 'Talking to Strangers' is a journey time-travelling back to 1979 with 'Sleepers', where she invited twenty nine people to sleep in her bed as she watched. This perhaps is a good indication of her the work that follows - she's been following, investigating into and exposing, the lives of herself and others ever since.


Whitechapel Gallery is beautiful.

Calle’s exhibition is everything I expected. It is like reading a postmodern and innovative novel. Photographs embedded with text. Calle creates art that an audience must read. The giant photographs that dominate the walls in the most spectacular installation, Take Care of Yourself, are only a part of the final piece. It is the words that constitute the work's fiercely beating heart.


Take Care of Yourself is particularly striking and holds a great fascination for my friend as I as women. The narrative of the installation works on many levels. Calle received an email from a lover, dumping her. Something the Bridget Jones generation can clearly understand in a world full of metrosexuals. Calle, rather than getting plastered on wine and listening to bad love songs like Fielding’s heroine she took control of the situation and asked a team of women – all experts in their professional fields – to respond to it. This is what is so fascinating about the installation – it is choir of women finely tuned to a singular pain.

The powerful roar at the eye of the storm – Calle’s rage and bewilderment at the man's cruel email – becomes louder and more resonant with each new variant on the text. There is a sisterhood in their understanding of the letter. Each woman interprets the letter from her point of view: a jurist analyses it as the termination of a contract, a translator examines its grammar and a composer turns it into music. Each creates beauty out of the misery reflecting the strength and fortitude of women in contemporary society. With each reinterpretation, the pain is added to each woman. Standing in the gallery it felt easy to remember upsetting break ups of my own. As an audience Calle allows us to make narratives of our own to explore and relive the pain of a break up.


This exhibition leads you into the fictions of other lives, other emotions. It allows you to create a narrative path of your own.