26 Facts About Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle is recognized for her detective-like tendency to follow strangers and investigate their private lives.

Since 2005, Sophie Calle has taught as a professor of film and photography at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Sophie Calle has lectured at the University of California, San Diego in the Visual Arts Department.

Sophie Calle has taught at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Exhibitions of Sophie Calle's work took place at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia; Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme, Paris; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium; Videobrasil, SESC Pompeia, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil; Whitechapel Gallery, London;, the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands;, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Sophie Calle represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2007.

In Suite Venitienne, Sophie Calle followed a man she met at a party in Paris to Venice, where she disguised herself and followed him around the city, photographing him.

Sophie Calle served them food and photographed them every hour.

Sophie Calle has created elaborate display cases of birthday presents given to her throughout her life; this process was detailed by Gregoire Bouillier in his memoir The Mystery Guest: An Account.

In 1996, Sophie Calle asked Israelis and Palestinians from Jerusalem to take her to public places that became part of their private sphere, exploring how one's personal story can create an intimacy with a place.

Sophie Calle asked writer and filmmaker Paul Auster to "invent a fictive character which I would attempt to resemble" and served as the model for the character Maria in Auster's 1992 novel Leviathan.

Auster later challenged Sophie Calle to create and maintain a public amenity in New York City.

Every day, Sophie Calle cleaned the booth and restocked the items, until the telephone company removed and discarded them.

In 1999 Sophie Calle exhibited the installation "Appointment" especially conceived for the Freud Museum in London, working with the ideas of her private desires.

In Room with a View, Sophie Calle spent the night in a bed installed at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Sophie Calle invited people to come to her and read her bedtime stories in order to keep her awake through the night.

Sophie Calle reluctantly chose to spend three months in Japan, deciding to make the journey take a month by taking the train through Moscow and through Siberia, then through Beijing, then to Hong Kong.

Sophie Calle was supposed to meet her lover in New Delhi, but he didn't turn up, instead sending her a telegram which said he was in an accident and couldn't come.

Sophie Calle found out that he only had an infected finger, a felon, and that he had actually found another woman.

Sophie Calle took a photograph every day until the day they were supposed to meet in New Delhi, and wrote about how much she looked forward to meeting him.

Sophie Calle would write about the horrible memory of the conversation where she realized he was breaking up with her on one page, and ask people to tell her their worst memory, which was placed on the right.

At the 2007 Venice Biennale, Sophie Calle showed her piece Take Care of Yourself, named after the last line of the email her ex sent her.

Sophie Calle insists that she did not need the other women's sentiments for herself, but to ensure that the piece was well-rounded.

Sophie Calle took her mother's portrait and jewelry and buried them at the North Pole.

In 2017, Sophie Calle was commissioned to create a public artwork for Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery.

Sophie Calle's work was featured in a site-specific installation occupying four floors in the Musee Picasso in 2023.