Currently, three exhibitions in the Tokyo area feature the work of French contemporary artist Sophie Calle. With a touch of irony and nostalgia, Calle points out the discrepancy between our vague and extreme memories and perceptions and our complex reality.
Can we truly view reality objectively as it is? Or are we only able to perceive reality by creating extreme and selfish stories—in other words, "fictions"—for complex phenomena? Her work seems to pose these questions.
Through short words, photographs, and video, she shows the process by which human emotions and memories change, centered around dramatic events. Her works, which express "fictions" arising from the discrepancy between vague memories and assumptions and reality, are very personal, vivid, and sometimes heavy, but perhaps they point to important lessons that we cannot avoid as we confront reality.
First up is her solo exhibition, "Sophie Calle: The Last Moment/The First Moment," at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Shinagawa. The exhibition features her photographic and text piece "The Last Thing I Saw," and her video piece "The Sea-Watcher." These two works were also exhibited at Galerie Perrotin in Paris last September.
"The Last Thing I Saw" is a work in which blind people photographically recreate the images they saw just before they lost their sight, transcribed and juxtaposed with photographs of the blind people themselves. The dramatic stories "narrated" by the blind people make us realize that the images themselves are vaguely fictional.
"The Sea-Watcher" is a work in which we capture the expressions of people from inland Turkey who have never seen the sea before, showing it for the first time. These people, sometimes shedding tears and expressing indescribable emotions, express themselves. No matter where you live, there is surely no one who has not seen images or videos of the sea. Nevertheless, when they actually see the sea for the first time, they are overwhelmed by its grandeur. Perhaps this proves that reality is far more complex and nuanced than the information we normally process, i.e., "fiction." Next, another work will be exhibited at the Hara Museum ARC in Gunma, an affiliated museum. "Localized Excruciating Pain," from 1999, is a work based on Calle's own experience of heartbreak. It depicts the three months leading up to his breakup as a "countdown" and the three months of recovery as a "countup." Through photographs and letters, Calle documents the tragic progression of an innocent relationship that leads to a breakup. "Countdown" uses photographs and letters exchanged between the two. "Countup" depicts Calle's own post-breakup emotional changes, interleaved with stories of the pain of other acquaintances and friends, to describe the gradual release from the unbearable pain of a breakup. In essence, "Localized Excruciating Pain" depicts the process by which emotional changes repeatedly rewrite one's own memories and distort the reality of the past. This work beautifully expresses the human trait of being saved only by creating ever-changing stories—in other words, "fiction."
Finally, we have "Please Stay Well," a work first exhibited at the French Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale, currently on display at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi as part of the "LOVE: Forms of Love in Art" exhibition.
In this work, Calle asks various women to interpret the emails she received from her lover after being dumped, attempting to explore the meaning of a breakup she herself cannot understand. This work, again composed of photographs and text, is notable for the stark differences in how each person interprets the breakup—in other words, their "fiction."
Calle's work is doubly journalistic in the sense that, in addition to depicting the drama of herself and others, it also implicitly questions the veracity of what is depicted. It goes far beyond the framework of a woman's self-understanding through expression, exposing the mechanisms by which humans create "fiction" and posing numerous questions.
Why not become captivated by Sophie Calle's journalistic expression of "fiction"? The exhibition is on view at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art until June 30th, at Hara Museum ARC until June 26th, and at the Mori Art Museum until September 1st.
