Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle (b. 1953, Paris) is a French conceptual artist, photographer, and filmmaker whose practice, developed since the late 1970s, investigates the boundaries between private and public life, reality and fiction, and art and lived experience. Working across photography, text, film, and installation, she constructs projects around actions in which the roles of observer and participant, investigator and subject, are deliberately made uncertain. Among her best-known projects are Suite vénitienne (1980), in which she followed a man to Venice and documented the pursuit; The Hotel (1981), which compiled records of guests' belongings while she worked as a chambermaid; and Take Care of Yourself (2007), in which she asked one hundred and seven women from different professions to respond to a letter left by a former lover. With this last work she represented France at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Text functions throughout her work as an equal and often competing voice alongside each image or document.

A landmark survey of her work premiered at the Centre Pompidou in 2003 and toured to Berlin and Dublin. She received the Hasselblad Award in 2010 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2024. In 2024, Sophie Calle: Overshare opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and traveled to the Orange County Museum of Art in 2026. In 2025, Château La Coste presented Sophie Calle Chasse Gardée at the Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art hosted Something Missing? in 2026. Her work is held by the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate, among others.