Sophie Calle is drawn to absence – of men, of work, of a feeling – in Margate

Sophie Calle is concerned with absence, she says, upon the opening of her new exhibition at Turner Contemporary in Margate.

It is her first UK exhibition in 2009, itself a surprising absence when considering the prolific nature of the French artist’s work. Calle resists easy definition, flitting between photography, video and installation, interested always in an eclectic array of subjects. In conceptual art project The Hotel (1981), Calle’s documenting of the Venice hotel’s inhabitants during her three weeks as a chambermaid was revealing and moving; in The Sleepers (1979), she invited 28 strangers to sleep in her bed, photographing the results. The works may be diverse, but they reveal a preoccupation with the human condition, exposing an undercurrent of vulnerability.

They are themes very much at play in Something Missing, a travelling exhibition formerly at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Here, absence takes shape in a multitude of forms – in the longing for a partner evident in On the Hunt (2017–2024), a compilation of the qualities most desired in a romantic partner in a series of classifieds, to Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished (2023), a gathering of the projects Calle began but never finished.

‘The Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Museum of Hunting and Nature) in Paris gave me an idea,’ says Calle. ‘I didn't know about hunting, but I know about hunting for a man. This museum had the oldest newspaper with personal ads, from 1890, so I went through them.’ In On the Hunt, Calle traces the journey from these ads, at a time before the war when a woman was expected to be a virgin, through to today’s desire for convenience and ease, encapsulated in apps such as Tinder.

‘What I like a lot about it is the economy of language,’ Calle says on the ads, which are touching in their directness (would marry intellectually interesting woman, pretty to look at, or 30-year-old seeks young woman, enormous bust only or bright eyes, without any prejudices on age difference, with artistic, somewhat literary tastes, and able to spend winter in town). ‘They’re like little haikus, because you have to pay by the word, so you have to be very precise and short. This is a vocabulary I generally like to use for my own text, as short and dry as possible.’

Elsewhere, it’s the work that’s missing, although the ideas are very much present, gathered and showcased as part of Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished, a tribute to all Calle’s projects which never made it to completion. Here, we have scraps of thoughts which never reached fruition and letters to fellow artists on projects which never materialised. ‘It was a way for me to get rid of everything I haven't finished,’ Calle says. ‘To finish it that way, to give it a life and an achievement, freeing me from all those things that have not worked because you have not done it. It was a way to give life to my project, even the ones that did not exist. So that catalogue, now, has been finished.’

As well a skilled archivist, Calle is an investigator and a sociologist. She is as interested in the experience of others as she is in her own, collecting first-person accounts throughout. Both Purloined (Turner) (1998–2013) – where she investigates the case of the stolen Turner paintings in 1994 by talking to security guards, curators and others – and Voir la Mer (2011), where she films residents of Istanbul seeing the sea for the first time, build on this desire to really know another.

‘Voir la Mer is totally silent except for the sound of the sea,’ Calle adds. ‘It’s the first time I did not use words because, for the first time, I had the feeling that the image was saying enough and there was no need to add anything, or I will disturb it. That happens to me so rarely.’

'Something Missing?' at Turner Contemporary until 24 January 2027