18/10/26
Sophie Calle: Something Missing?
Turner Contemporary, Margate
3 October 2026 – 24 January 2027
Words, words, words. Words are my tool. But what happens when an artist’s use of words is so prolific, yet so efficient and precise, that mine suddenly seem superfluous? This is exactly how I feel in relation to the work of Sophie Calle (b1953, Paris). Each piece consists of a bipartite sign, which, unlike the linguistic and semiotic model of Ferdinand de Saussure, with its signifier (arbitrary words or image) and signified (mental concept), comprises two signifiers: word (typically a first-person account) and image (photograph or moving image). In an interview with the author Édouard Louis in the catalogue to accompany her exhibition, Something Missing?, which began at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in March 2026, Calle suggests it is due to her parents that she is who she is, and that her mother influenced her to want to write, and her father to want to photograph. However, since she felt inadequate at each of these professions in and of themselves, she brought them together and became an artist, something at which she has excelled over the past half a century.
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