Sophie Calle: Ma mère aimait qu’on parle d’elle

Download the introduction to the exhibition as well as the english translations to the artworks here 

Wilson Saplana Gallery is proud to present an exhibition with the world-renowned French artist Sophie Calle

The exhibition is the first solo presentation of Sophie Calle in the Nordic countries for more than 10 years. In 2010 when she had a solo exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and Galleri Christina Wilson, and in the same year, she received the prestigious Hasselblad award in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Sophie Calle (FR, b.1953), who is alternately described as a conceptual artist, photographer, and video artist, has exhibited at most major art museums in the world since the late 1970s, including Louisiana, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, and in 2007 she represented France at the Venice Biennale. In '24 she exhibits at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA, and at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo, Japan. Last year Sophie Calle took over the entire Musée Picasso in Paris with a large exhibition on all floors of the museum.

Sophie Calle's works can be seen as a series of rituals, where she blurs the boundaries between the intimate and the public, reality and fiction, art and life, while leaving room for chance. In her works, Calle depicts both human vulnerability and folly, often with herself at the center, as in her expansive series of Autobiographies which we will show works from in the gallery.

The exhibition Ma mère aimait qu’on parle d’elle (My mother enjoyed being talked about) is about Sophie Calle's relationship with her mother and her mother's death. Through photography and text, we can experience Sophie Calle giving birth to her cat and her mother get a pedicure as part of her own funeral preparations. We are also invited into Calle's studio, where a giraffe named after the mother Monique hangs.

The main work of the exhibition will be the photographic installation Pole North (2009), which tells about Sophie Calle's journey to the Arctic with her mother's jewelry and portrait under her arm. In 2008 Calle was invited to participate in a program that brings together artists, writers, and researchers around the theme of global warming. This trip was also an opportunity for the artist to pay tribute to her late mother, whose unfulfilled dream was to travel to the North Pole. On October 2nd 2008, Calle visits a glacier, turns over a rock, and buries her mother's portrait, her ring, and necklace. She then reflects on where these personal possessions will end up as climate changes set in. Maybe they will end up back in France and come full circle?…