In Conversation: Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle (born 1953 in Paris) lives and works in Malakoff, France. She works in the media of photography, text, performance and video and deals with topics such as voyeurism, surveillance, love, intimacy, violence, and death. In most of her conceptual series of works, she combines image and writing. In 2007, she represented France at the Venice Biennale. International museums exhibited her works, including Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Pompidou Paris, Musée d'Orsay Paris, Tate Britain London, Hara Museum Tokyo, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago, Musée Picasso Paris. Call's works are in important collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York as well as the Louisiana Museum (DNK) and the National Gallery — Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

On November 12, 2026, Hamburger Bahnhof — National Gallery of Contemporary Art opens with “Sophie Calle. Is It Better? “her first solo exhibition in Berlin in over 20 years. Six work complexes from the last three decades of photography, text, installation and video provide an insight into the media diversity of the French conceptual artist. The starting point for Sophie Calle's solo exhibition is a work from the series “The Distance”, a permanent loan from the Hamburger Bahnhof collection. The series was created in Berlin in 1996, the year the museum was founded. The twelve photographs show public places in Berlin where symbols of the GDR were removed after reunification, combined with descriptions of passers-by. For the first time after its creation for the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the expansive installation “Les fantômes d'Orsay” (2022) will also be exhibited. Between 1978 and 1981, Calle stayed almost every day in room 501 of the abandoned hotel in the former Gare d'Orsay train station, which, like Hamburger Bahnhof, became an art museum. The installation combines found objects as well as photographs and texts.

The exhibition opens on the 30th anniversary weekend of Hamburger Bahnhof from November 13 to 15, 2026, during which the museum will be open continuously for 30 hours.

Moderation: Lisa Hörstmann, curator Hamburger Bahnhof — National Gallery of Contemporary Art

The conversation will be held in English.

The event takes place in the action room. The entrance is via Invalidenstraße, to the right of the main entrance.