The house is a former chapel in the Camargue, the wild region of southern France where the artist has spent summers throughout her life. A zebra bursts from the wall above the door, part of her large taxidermy collection, each animal named after a different friend the zebra is Daniel, as in Buren, a French artist renowned for his work with stripes.
Abandoned tombstones decorate the garden. Her books and exhibitions combine photos or video with text, exploring such themes as absence, death, suffering and desire. She does not hesitate to break taboos, overstep boundaries, or invite viewers to share in the discomfort or guilty pleasure of voyeurism. Even when the content is mundane, the works are provocative and compelling. They can be surprisingly touching, and just as surprisingly funny.
Calle photographed on 15 September at home in Malakoff, on the south-west outskirts of Paris. Photography: Alexandre Guirkinger. Reasoning that the hunt for wild animals was not unlike the hunt for a potential mate, she combed through the archives to find what mating criteria best represented each decade.
At first, money. Then virginity. After the war, many were related to physicality — a paralysed soldier could now accept a cleft lip. To accompany the text, she is using her photos of watchtowers, symbolising predators and highway surveillance images of animals at night symbolising prey. Though these works disclose much that is personal, their subjects remain as elusive as composite police sketches.
To know that a man took this street and not another, or dined at 8pm, is not information. The investigation is more about me and my feelings than him. But if Calle is an exhibitionist, she insists it is on her own terms.
