My Fake But Real Exchange With The Artist Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle, “In Memory of Frank Gehry’s Flowers,” 2014, 11 two-sided plexiglass-framed colour photographs and text, arranged connected a painted, grooved, wall-mounted wood shelf; caller flowers successful solid vase by Frank Gehry 78 x 54 1/2 x 9 1/2 in.

(From nan creator and Gemini G.E.L, 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris)

Two days earlier nan caller year, I hopped connected a video telephone pinch nan French conceptual creator Sophie Calle. She was spending nan holidays successful her location successful nan South of France. I sewage nan email notification erstwhile she signed connected 5 minutes early, which I took arsenic a motion of her professionalism. When nan video came into focus, she peered down astatine nan camera successful her tinted, green-rimmed glasses. I thanked her for her time, told her I was a instrumentality of her creation and she gave maine a smile. I jumped to nan point, arsenic I sensed she wanted maine to, and projected 2 ideas for really we mightiness collaborate connected a portion for nan magazine, successful ray of her walking retrospective, “Overshare,” that was astir to unfastened astatine nan UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. First, I said, she could constitute aliases make thing — but earlier I carried on, she trim maine off: No. She simply didn’t person nan time. In 2026 unsocial she had respective exhibitions, a caller book and truthful forth. Calle, arsenic group for illustration to say, is very French.

I was, however, pleased that Calle preferred to move guardant pinch nan 2nd idea, nan 1 that allowed maine to proceed an speech pinch her. I told her that successful studying her assemblage of activity complete caller weeks, I noticed for nan first clip nan recurring beingness of California. I wasn’t willing successful penning a floor plan connected Calle (primed by her unfastened distaste for profiles). Perhaps, I said, we could do thing little accepted successful which we had an open-ended speech complete email astir these useful and her narration to California — she could respond pinch images, successful English aliases successful French — and I would constitute astir nan acquisition of that conversation. Calle accepted but countered that we person “a clone but existent exchange.” I was thrilled upon proceeding this and swiftly wrote nan building down. It was a motion that this could beryllium what I’d hoped for: that together we mightiness create something, person a speech that was an hold of her activity alternatively than astir it.

Calle, who is now 72, is known for peeking into nan friendly lives of others. She has worked arsenic a edifice chambermaid and photographed guests’ possessions successful nan bedrooms. She has invited group to slumber successful her bed, interviewed them astir their sleeping habits and photographed them erstwhile they’ve fallen asleep. She has followed a man from Paris to nan floating streets of Venice and documented his each move. Most of her projects return nan shape of books and brace photographs pinch words. I gravitated toward Calle arsenic a writer first, loving her penning nan measurement writers do — wanting to bounce disconnected it, beryllium a portion of it. My telephone pinch her was my naïve effort astatine conscionable this.

Immediately, Calle group disconnected connected our clone but existent exchange. In different words, we would not person an existent backmost and forth. Instead, she would nonstop maine immoderate paragraphs she’d already written — unpublished and published — and I would respond to them successful my ain time. If necessary, she would respond to questions if I had them down nan line. She told maine that conscionable yesterday she had written thing astir her first representation of California. She emailed it to maine while we were still chatting. It began pinch nan avant-garde playwright Robert Wilson, her emotion for his productions and her desire to subordinate his theatre company. At 23, she tracked him down successful Avignon, successful nan hopes to meet him. “He was talking pinch Philip Glass; I followed them, wanting to interrupt them,” nan email read. “Before I could opportunity a word, Bob turned and yelled astatine me.” It didn’t activity out, but it was because of Bob that she met Kathy Ray, a personnel of his company, who took Calle backmost pinch her to Bolinas, Calif., wherever she went to a cemetery and photographed nan graves — her self-proclaimed first useful of art. Forty-eight years later, Calle would spell backmost to Bolinas and bargain a sedate crippled for herself successful that aforesaid cemetery. “Bob was portion of my life, whether he liked it aliases not.”

The representation ended pinch Calle receiving nan Praemium Imperiale prize successful 2024 successful Tokyo, wherever Wilson was besides successful attendance. “At nan opening of 2025, I learned that he had contacted nan prize committee to get my telephone number,” she wrote, matter-of-factly. “It had taken him [49] years. And soon afterward, he died.”

Calle told maine this representation was portion of her caller bid called “Too Late,” astir nan things she erstwhile wanted to do, but now are excessively precocious to happen. She wrote 1 for nan designer Frank Gehry, a adjacent friend who had died astatine his location successful Santa Monica conscionable 3 weeks earlier our speech — different California connection. She besides emailed it to me, together pinch a statement that Gehry wrote for her connected a napkin:

TOO LATE. Frank Gehry

I met Frank Gehry for nan first clip successful Los Angeles successful 1984, and he met maine for nan first clip that aforesaid twelvemonth successful Nîmes. This disagreement became our favourite quarrel. Later, astatine my request, Frank created a telephone booth connected nan Pont du Garigliano successful Paris, nan number of which I was meant to dial regularly successful nan dream that personification would answer. After nan building was completed—his smallest committee successful position of quadrate meters—I approached him pinch an moreover much humble project: a funerary stele for my cat. Apparently without thinking, aliases retired of friendship, he said yes. Then he began to resistance his feet; he kept putting it off, and I kept insisting. One day, he wrote retired a database of places I could enactment during my adjacent sojourn to nan US, and astatine nan aforesaid clip he renewed his committedness of a tombstone, pinch 1 condition: that we’d support disagreeing forever. Frank died connected December 5, 2025: breakdown of negotiations. Deadlock.

A handwritten database by Frank Gehry to Sophie Calle.

(Photo by Sophie Calle)

The agleam pinkish and reddish telephone booth that Frank Gehry designed for Calle peels unfastened for illustration nan petals of a flower, a motion to nan bouquets he sent Calle connected each opening nighttime of her exhibitions, nary matter wherever successful nan world, during nan 40-plus years of their friendship. They met successful 1984, erstwhile Calle came to L.A. to do a task for nan Olympics, for which she asked artists for illustration Gehry and Ed Ruscha, “Where are nan angels successful L.A.?” (Gehry’s unequivocal response: “In my house. They are my wife, and my children. I unrecorded for them. That’s all.”) Gehry introduced Calle to her first gallerist, Fred Hoffman, helping to motorboat her world career. Calle kept and dried nan bouquets that Gehry sent her. In 2014, she photographed them, an image that is now connected show successful her exhibition, and nestled among nan browned flowers are nan notecards reference “Love, Frank.”

Calle emailed maine 2 further photos: 1 of nan past flowers that Gehry ever sent her, successful September 2025, of orangish roses and hydrangeas, and different of them laughing and embracing connected a vessel disconnected Santa Monica.

Sophie Calle and Grank Gehry successful Santa Monica; below, nan past flowers that Gehry ever sent Calle, successful September 2025.

(Photo by Sophie Calle)

(Photo by Sophie Calle)

The nighttime earlier our call, I stumbled upon a photograph of Calle and Gehry connected Facebook, playfully kissing each different connected nan lips, from 2017. Wow, what a pair! The commenters said. They merit a saccharine kiss!

Regarding Gehry, Calle was speedy to state: She would only stock things astir him that connected backmost to her work. I said of course, fresh to grant our existent but fake, aliases clone but real, exchange. I was pinch nan persona, not nan person.

“Overshare,” primitively organized by nan Walker Art Center, centers connected this thought of “exposure” — really Calle presents herself, what she chooses to disclose and not disclose, what is “fictive” versus “authentic.” But nan mobility of what is existent aliases not is futile, moreover if Calle deliberately provokes this curiosity. A story, nevertheless based successful life, is constructed. The existent becomes fake, nan fictive authentic.

I wonderment if nan cliché of California appealed to Calle: nan invitation to reinvent yourself, a spot wherever you tin dress up who you want to be. It seems fitting that it’s wherever she felt free to go an artist. I email her, a period aft our call: “Do you deliberation California arsenic a spot inspired your determination to beryllium an artist? Did being present springiness you immoderate consciousness of permission? Why do you deliberation California is simply a recurring spot successful your work? What does California (and/or nan U.S.) mean to you?”

Two days later, she responds: “I americium sorry but I can’t reply your questions [...] California has not inspired maine much than New York, Mexico etc….”

Perhaps I americium inventing a communicative astir Calle that is excessively clone to beryllium true. Perhaps it is my ain emotion for California that I americium projecting — my ain belief successful its openness and playfulness, successful really refreshingly unjudgmental it tin be.

On our video call, we had surgery down her California communicative into parts, for illustration chapters successful a book. I for illustration to deliberation I was experiencing her process of creating a work, pinch clear constraints and nary analyzing — conscionable laying retired nan facts connected nan table. She had a pen successful manus and was penning down nan parts arsenic we remembered them.

I brought up nan 27-year-old man successful San Francisco who, successful 1999, successful nan aftermath of a breakup, wrote to Calle and asked if he could walk his “mourning/grieving period” successful her furniture successful Paris. “Should we person this experience, possibly we could each usage it arsenic creator fodder,” he wrote. In what I now observe arsenic a pattern, she accepted nan acquisition but countered: She would vessel her furniture to him, and he would slumber successful it unsocial for a fewer months. There would beryllium nary “we.”

Seven years before, successful 1992, Calle released nan movie “No Sex Last Night,” which she made pinch her then-boyfriend, Greg Shephard, connected a roadworthy travel from New York to California. For nan film, they each recorded their backstage thoughts complete nan people of nan trip. Shephard, who suggests he’s mostly mislaid liking successful Calle, speaks of his first attraction toward her, really he knew astir her creation earlier they met, and really he wanted to “reinvent” himself for illustration she did. This roadworthy trip, which he reluctantly goes on, is his chance to make thing pinch her, to measurement into her process. But he soon finds that he has nary opportunity successful her “games,” and has nary prime but to play them — including, amazingly, getting joined astatine a Las Vegas drive-through.

Like these men, I americium eager to co-create thing pinch Calle but find that it isn’t imaginable successful nan measurement I had imagined it. She sets nan rules. Who do we deliberation we are to steer her art?

When we spoke, Calle mentioned that she was going backmost to nan sedate crippled she had purchased successful 2011, successful Bolinas, adjacent year. She wasn’t judge yet what she would do there, but it would beryllium akin to an installation she did astatine Green-Wood Cemetery successful Brooklyn, for which she invited visitors to shop their secrets wrong a tombstone.

Surely, California must mean thing to Calle if it’s nan spot wherever she bought her sedate plot, wherever she is presumably going to beryllium buried. I inquire her successful my email: “Why is it important to you to beryllium buried there? Does it matter to you that it is successful California, not France?”

And present she says thing that must stay betwixt us. It concludes our clone but existent exchange.

Sophie Calle, “Mother-Father,” 2018, pigment print, embroidered woolen cloth, woody box, 16-7/8 x 22-5/8 x 2-5/8 in. (42.8 x 57.8 x 7.3 cm).

(From nan creator and Fraenkel Gal, 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris)

Not each artist’s first activity is that revealing aliases interesting, but successful Calle’s case, it’s each there, successful her photos of nan Bolinas gravestones, base nan words mother, father, daughter. The astir “real” point astir Calle’s activity lies not wrong nan mutable facts of life, but nan indisputable truth of death.

Calle talks astir really her activity has helped her to create “distance” from difficult topics — for illustration losing parents, lovers and friends. When she’s happy, she wants to “live nan story” and “be inside” it, arsenic she erstwhile said successful an Art21 interview. It’s only erstwhile nan communicative is “about death, astir absence” that she finds nan request to grounds it.

The parts aliases chapters successful Calle’s California story, spanning from 1978 to this day, mostly revolve astir nonaccomplishment — a missed connection, a breakup, a deceased friend, her ain death. I tin spot really California conscionable happens to beryllium nan setting, arsenic these themes repetition elsewhere successful her art. Still, California has been a dependable and accordant inheritance character, aliases a reliable interlocutor, consenting to prosecute her games.

The second-to-last room of “Overshare” is devoted to Calle’s useful explicitly astir death. At nan halfway is simply a video she made of her mother dying. She lies motionless and pinch her eyes closed, while a manus rests successful beforehand of her chemoreceptor to cheque if she is still breathing. This is nan only activity Calle ever made of her mother, and erstwhile she group up nan video camera by nan bed, her mother’s guidance was to say, “Finally.” She had ever wanted to beryllium a subject, to play a existent portion successful her daughter’s art, but Calle hadn’t heeded her requests.

What is it astir Calle that makes america want to participate successful her art, to beryllium wrong and witnesser it? Maybe it’s that her activity is each astir interactions pinch others — mostly strangers — that people, including myself, presume they tin conscionable gaffe in. She makes america consciousness for illustration we are already her subjects and that she’ll simply bounce disconnected regular encounters arsenic they happen. But Calle, for illustration immoderate writer, sketches her characters and frames their destinies. She is nan only writer of her stories, nan clone and nan real.

Sophie Calle astatine nan Musee Picasso, 2024.

(Yves Geant)