Actes Sud publishes a reissue of the book What do you do with your dead? by Sophie Calle, in which answers to this famous question have been added, coming from the guestbook of her exhibitions at the Center de la Vieille Charitée in Marseille in 2019 and at the Kunstmuseum in Ravensburg in 2020.
One of Sophie Calle's most beautiful exhibitions took place in 2017, when the French artist took over the Museum of Hunting and Nature in a journey between humor and sorrow, bringing together her favorite themes. Among them, mourning. As death became more present in her life, it invaded Sophie Calle's artistic territory. The exhibition “Beautiful double, Monsieur le Marquis” closed with a guest book in which visitors were asked a question: “What do you do with your dead?” »
The answers were brought together in a work initially published in 2019 by Actes Sud and whose recent reissue continues this exploration of mourning across the world. What do you do with your dead? brings together photographs of tombstones taken in cemeteries in different countries with the hand-written testimonies of visitors who wanted to tell him about the post-mortem life of their loved ones: if some eat them, cremated in yogurt according to the wishes of the deceased, others tell them the latest episodes of their favorite series.
These testimonies, like Sophie Calle who always mixes registers to take us from laughter to tears, oscillate between crazy anecdotes and deep and moving reflections from visitors who have faced the loss of a loved one. They invite us to question our own beliefs, our own rituals and the place we give to our deceased in our lives.
Each page of the work is an invitation to enter this space where art and introspection meet and in which absence becomes almost tangible. What do you do with your dead? is yet another example of the finesse with which Sophie Calle tends to make an intimate experience universal.
Sophie Calle – What do you do with your dead?
November, 2024
15.80 x 21.50 cm
272 pages
ISBN : 978-2-330-19668-4
35.00€
Available online and in all good bookstores
More information:
- Sophie Calle
- Instagram – Sophie Calle
- South Acts
