Frenchwoman Sophie Calle wins Nobel Prize for the Arts

3 min

At the age of 70, this is the consecration for one of the most famous artists in France. Born on October 9, 1953 in Paris, Sophie Calle grew up in the Gard, in the south of France. Her father, a cancer specialist and former director of the Curie Institute, is friends with very well-known artists such as Martial Raysse, a precursor of French pop art, the new realist Arman, known for his accumulations, and Christian Boltanski, a French visual artist haunted by memory and death. This is how Sophie Calle approached contemporary art after having campaigned for Maoism, feminism and the proletarian left. Literally lost after this political commitment without any real outcome, she returned to Paris looking for herself. To find herself, she followed strangers in the street. This was the unexpected beginning of her artistic performances, often characterized by a desire to abolish the boundaries between art and life.

“ His work depicts human vulnerability »

Awarded since 1988 by the Japanese Imperial Family on behalf of Japan’s oldest cultural foundation, the Japan Art Association, the Praemium Imperiale Prize is considered, thanks to its endowment of 15 million yen (currently 96,000 euros) for each laureate, also as the “Nobel” of the arts. It is awarded in five fields for the entire artistic career: painting, sculpture, architecture, music and theater-cinema.

In its tribute to Sophie Calle, the jury of the Praemium Imperiale prize stressed: “ Through photography, film, and text, her works are an almost voyeuristic documentation of the lives of others and her interactions with them. (…) Calle has also boldly exposed her own life in her works. Her work depicts human vulnerability and examines identity and intimacy, but her goal is simple: “I seek to make works to tell stories that have poetic or artistic potential.” ».

Indeed, his works strike with an assumed incongruity. In The Sleepers (1979), she invites strangers – but also acquaintances, including the actor Fabrice Luchini – to sleep in her bed and then interview them. Venetian Suite (1980) is the journey of a tourist in Venice whom she begins to secretly follow like a detective to document his visit. And for the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale, in 2007 she asked a hundred women to act out the last line of a break-up letter to transform their responses into poetic and artistic works.

Absence and provocation

Since 1981, the artist has lived and worked in Malakoff, near Paris, occupying a disused factory that she shares with the visual artists Christian Boltanski and Annette Messager. Among her favorite themes are also absence and provocation, for example when she publishes break-up letters or installs a temporary telephone booth on a bridge in Paris so that unknown passers-by can receive her calls.

The Pompidou Center dedicated a retrospective to him in 2004 Have you seen me?. In 2010, she was awarded the prestigious Hasselblad Foundation International Prize, before being named Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2012. Her last major exhibition was in 2023/2024 when she occupied all four floors of the Musée National Picasso-Paris with her works. It’s up to you to do it, my dear.