‘Sometimes I do cruel things – and it’s worth it’: the fabulous shameless art of the great Sophie Calle

The French artist has stalked people, posed as a hotel maid to get into rooms, and filmed her mother’s last breath. Has she any regrets? Non! As a major UK show opens, she recalls her career highs

I’ve read enough interviews with Sophie Calle to know that the conversation ahead could be tricky. France’s most famous conceptual artist can be a touch evasive. Which is why I’m so surprised by the woman before me, who is friendly and seemingly open, all smiles. She’s wearing big tinted glasses, and behind them I picture her eyes twinkling. Then, 10 minutes in, she tells me she is obsessed with absence. When I ask why, she says: “Why do you live in England? Why are you wearing that sweater? I am not here to do therapy with you.”

She is talking to me from the same Paris apartment she has been living in for almost 50 years. Hanging from the ceiling is a disco ball, and, alongside pictures and books, there are boxes that I imagine are filled with the innermost thoughts and feelings of her subjects. Since the early 1980s, Calle has made a name for herself with art that is at once intimate and detached, morbid and playful, immersing us in the lives of others – and in her own life, too. With a camera and a notebook in hand, she has invited strangers to sleep in her bed, posed as a hotel maid to document the belongings of guests, and called everyone in a lost address book to build a peculiarly tender portrait of its owner. Now, at 72, she is about to open her first big show in the UK for nearly two decades.

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