The Frenchwoman Sophie Calle receives this Tuesday, November 19 in Tokyo the Praemium Imperiale prize, considered the Nobel of arts, in the “Painting” category. Conceptual artist, photographer, video maker, she has been the subject of numerous exhibitions since 1970 around the world.
“In 1979, I had just spent ten years in militant activities, the feminist or far-left movements. All my projects had a political resonance. They did not work. It was as if they were not for me. So I took another path,” Sophie Calle said during a press conference on the eve of the official ceremony of the Praemium Imperiale prize.
“At the same time, in an underground way, I also have these (political) concerns. I worked in Berlin on the fall of the Wall, trying to imagine what the absence of all these monuments caused in people destroyed. It was not a directly political work since it focused more on emotions, but I think that in my way, it is political,” she explained.
“I talk more about people’s pain, a pain that is more individual than linked to the great transformations of society,” added the Frenchwoman whose coincidence means that she is inaugurating an exhibition on Saturday in the Japanese capital entitled “Absences”, where her works will share the spotlight with those of Toulouse-Lautrec.
A metaphysical and conceptual work
Conceptual artist, photographer, video maker who has been the subject of numerous exhibitions since 1970 around the world, Sophie Calle has developed a metaphysical and conceptual work which uses all media and is mainly based on autofiction, being very interested in disappearance and death.
Absence “is the theme that runs through all my projects. I talk about my mother dying, men leaving, statues being torn down. I always come back to absence, whatever it may be. my idea, whether light or deep, spontaneous or thoughtful It must be what interests me the most but I don’t have a theory about absence,” Calle explained.
“I take this award with great joy”
The Praemium Imperiale was created in 1988 by the Japan Art Association and grants each winner the sum of 15 million yen (approximately 86,000 Swiss francs).
This prize “is offered for my work and not for my success even if sometimes they go together. I take it with great joy especially since it comes from far away and it is always more mysterious, more unexpected. There is even something miraculous”, commented the artist, born in 1953, great admirer of Georges Perec.
The artist also says that she kept a painful memory of her first trip to Japan for three months forty years ago, when her love at the time left her during her stay.
“This man gave me what I consider to be the most painful moment of my life. And it turns out that he had the same price as me (the Praemium Imperiale). This story is ultimately quite funny”, declared Sophie Calle, smiling, but refusing to give her name.
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