The Hotel, Room 47
SOPHIE CALLE
SOPHIE CALLE, 1981
In February 1981, the conceptual artist Sophie Calle was hired as a chambermaid at a Venetian hotel. As she cleaned each of the twelve rooms, she not only documented the belongings of the guests but, in some way, became them. She used their perfumes, the contents of their make up bags, ate their leftover food, tried on their clothes. She rummaged through suitcases and read diaries. In Room 47, a family of four was staying. They bored her. Her unashamed voyeurism sought something more, something different. The resulting artworks appear as diptychs. One frame contains Calle’s written observations not only of the contents of their rooms but of details of their lives, parsed from the detritus. How much can we learn from the contents of someone’s suitcase, and how much can we become them from fleeting impersonations?