SOPHIE CALLE - EXQUISITE PAIN

Sophie Calle was born in Paris in 1953. Since the 1980s, her installations have received international recognition at galleries and museums throughout the world, including the Tate in London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Over the last two decades, Sophie Calle has made it her business to follow, peek into and illuminate the lives of people she barely knows, with results that both illustrate human vulnerability and tend not infrequently to pathos. In Exquisite Pain, Calle turns her attention to a life-changing and heart-breaking experience from her own past.

When a lover failed to meet Calle as promised in a hotel in New Delhi, after she had completed a 92-day journey through the Far East, Calle was devastated. As ever, she had kept everything from that journey – photographs, ticket stubs, visas and letters – and in the book, each one is rubber-stamped counting down to the fateful day of her heartbreak.

On her return to Paris, she asked a group of friends to answer the question, ‘When did you most suffer?’. Their stories of pain, each of them accompanied by a photograph, interplay with Calle’s own story and daily reflections as she gradually comes to terms with the rejection and her equilibrium is restored.