It is in room no. 20 in the La Mirande hotel that Sophie Calle is making a new stop in Avignon, inviting the Festival's public to visit her. A hotel room inhabited by the artist but also by the objects that she has meticulously arranged in it: photos, books and pictures, a naturalized cat, a wedding gown... All of them are connected to key moments in her life, “true stories”. Presented as in a museum, they are accompanied by small descriptive cards written by the artist, which recount their story and justify their presence in this place. But, unlike the exhibitions that she previously organized in various venues, from the simple gallery to a house, by way of Sigmund Freud's apartment, Sophi Calle decided to be physically present in this room n° 20. From the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed, she will therefore live her life in it, leaving and entering, writing, eating her breakfast, having her friends visit. According to how she spends her time during the Festival, visitors can perhaps run into her, talk to her or just look at her, like an object among others. For Sophie Calle, this exhibition of private life is another way to come back to the Festival d'Avignon, after Rachel, Monique, the “performance” that she proposed last year and where, for the first time, she was present as a reader in the middle of an exhibition: the one she devoted to her late mother. Once again, slipping into the middle of the objects that are so close to her heart, Sophie Calle offers the visitor a unique experience of encounter. In taking possession of a place in which she multiplies the concrete details of a life, she continues to make use of confusion and mischievously questions the floating border between reality and fiction, between the natural and staging. JFP
Distribution
conception Sophie Calle
Production
production Sophie Calle and Festival d'Avignon