Sophie Calle

'Room 20'

Sophie Calle is a first-person artist. Most of her works are autobiographical. In her works, she directs herself, shamelessly, unreservedly. In them, using direct language, she tells stories she has lived and shares all details by showing objects that she used before. For example, in her work” Room 20”, she built up a scene of a room and displayed some objects that have a story in her life. Next to the object is a text like a diary. For this work, when the audience walks in it, they are in a museum of Sophie Calle. She provides all links to allow the audience to peek at her life. Since I’m using found objects as a part of my works, I intend to let the audience to find out the stories by their understanding and imagination behind these narrative bodies of work.

'Secret'

Another part of Sophie’s work inspired me is she also gets materials from strangers. I'm investigating the psychological influence of human beings, for example, how do people react to their hidden desires and how does their experience affect their life? At first, I only created work based on my own experience, and now I collect information from other people. In her works " hotel room" series, "Here lies secrets" collecting strangers' privacy and transferring them into artworks. There is a piece of work that Sophie made in 2014, which is called “secret”. She found a couple. Have each of them tell her a secret. Install two safes in their home. Lock each secret up in its safe. Keep the codes to herself. The lovers will have to live with the others’ secret close at hand but out of reach. As I read from this work is how to deal with secrets and burden, and how to control your curiosity of peeping at each others’ secret, especially in an imitate relationship. I found a connection between my practice and Sophie’s. Looking at her work, it’s more like being a part of her survey’s process.