I got really interested in the work from Sophie Calle, a french installation and conceptual artist. Her main concepts are human vulnerability, intimacy and identity. Her detective-like abilities to follow strangers and investigate deeply in their lives, made me wanting to re-create that understanding of a person through their personal activities and objects for the “eyes without a face” project. The main artwork that I chose to focus on is “The Hotel”, made in 1981 where, during her job as a chambermaid in a Venetian hotel, she photographed the various objects and writings that she found in the various bedrooms that later will help her create a possible image of the people that owned those objects.
Repeatedly, the structure used to portray the room remains the same. In fact, the two-part framed work shows, on the top, a coloured picture of the bed found in that particular room where, placed centrally underneath, black letters for the room number. Moreover, three columns of italics characters describe her findings during the days of her cleaning job. Differently, in the bottom structure, there are black-white pictures that illustrate the various objects that she observed in that space. Sophie Calle created each frame using two works on paper (photographs and ink) with dimensions of 2140 x 1420 mm.
I believe that Sophie Calle’s intention was to get a better understanding of the insights of various people through their highly-used, everyday objects because she believed that she could get a major comprehension of a person by observing and analysing what was essential to them and, therefore, the items that individuals were bringing along with them on holidays. Her objective is depicted in the detailed descriptions that are found in the first frame, where she clearly states what she observed. All the clear explanations of what the object is emphasise how clearly the writing support the pictures that are found in the second frame. The strategies that the artist uses to give a final portrayal of the owners of those objects are really effective as, even without seeing the physical feature of the person, the viewer gets a extremely deep characterisation of the individual as, from the objects, anything can be captured: from what job they do to how old they are.
My own work is completely related to Sophie Calle’s one as I believe that the objects are the most important thing that a person owns and, therefore, they give a lot of understanding of the character of a particular person because the viewer can correlate each item with a certain sensations or emotion that that individual shows and portrays. This is the reason why I chose to focus only on the objects of the person that I had to represent, along with, unlike her, sounds that have an emotional attachment to the individual.
