Sophie Calle, Where and When?

Yoshiko Shimada, Bones in Tansu.

6 September – 18 October 2008


Galleri Christina Wilson has moved to fine new premises at Esplanaden 8B in Copenhagen. We are celebrating this with an exhibition by the French artist Sophie Calle, Where and When?, and, in the project room, an exhibition by the Japanese artist Yoshiko Shimada, Bones in Tansu.

We are proud to be able to present an entirely new work by one of France's most prominent artists, Sophie Calle (b. 1953). The work consists of a frieze of photographs and texts, together with a neon work and a video.

It is always exciting to be presented with a new work by Sophie Calle. Her working practices are to say the least original, and the new work, Where and When? is in many ways typical of her production. The work begins with Calle calling up her clairvoyant and asking her to foretell her future, so she can go out and meet it. The clairvoyant is not immediately willing to do so, but after some persuasion she agrees that Calle can ask the questions: Where? and When? The clairvoyant then reads the tarot cards, which send Calle off on a train journey to the northern French town of Berck, where she is to "methodically and scientifically" note all significant events, times and details. She leaves with an open mind, and tries to "avoid asking myself what I am doing here, and why I have come. I am here because those are the rules."

The work illustrates the journey with photographs of the train station, the tarot cards, the hotel room, etc. She must regularly contact the clairvoyant for instructions, and her first task is to ask passers-by on the beach what they feel they lost when they left childhood behind. She does not feel good about this, as she sees that the beach is full of people in wheelchairs. This is because Berck is first and foremost a place where people come for rehabilitation if they have been involved in traffic accidents. She asks herself whether she will already be forced to lie!?

In this way, Sophie Calle creates a work built upon coincidences, minor events and detached, matter-of-fact descriptions, which in the end become a pictorial and textual story that is both rich and absorbing. With the help of a number of rules, which determine her actions, she creates, as in many earlier works, order out of the unfathomable chaos of the world.

In 2007, Sophie Calle represented France at the Venice Biennale, where she exhibited a major work, Take Care Of Yourself, the title of which was taken from the last line of a farewell letter from a lover when he ended the relationship. Calle asked 107 women – an actor, a psychologist, a clairvoyant, a dancer, a clown, etc. – to analyse the letter, and the result was exhibited at the biennale.

In 2003, Sophie Calle held her first solo exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Calle is represented in most large art museums all over the world.



It is also a great pleasure to be able to exhibit the Japanese artist Yoshiko Shimada, who, like Calle, is showing at the gallery for the first time.

Bones in Tansu is a work in a constant state of development. Yoshiko Shimada (b. 1959) began work on it in 2004, and it reveals the most personal and secret sides of our lives.

Bones in Tansu was originally conceived of as an attempt to address Japanese participation in World War Two. In contrast to Germany, Japan has not wished to publicly discuss the collective neuroses that still lie like open sores in the country's history. Neither is there a tradition of emotional and intimate ties within the family. Japanese society builds to a large extent upon on strict, patriarchal conformity, and it is this conformity that Shimada wishes to confront.

The installation consists of four antique chests of drawers, called tansu in Japanese. As the public open the drawers one by one, they find photographs and printed items, arranged as beautiful collages and accompanied by a text in Japanese or English. The texts are secrets that the public write and place in a locked box, which lies on a table behind a curtain in the gallery. Every day during the exhibition, the artist empties the box and processes the texts, blurring them so that they become anonymous.

In Bones in Tansu, it is permitted to say anything. The artist has exhibited the work at museums in various places in the world; it is thereby no longer strictly Japanese, but has acquired a general relevance. Inside the tansus lie secrets of bulimia, incest, homosexuality and crises of identity which are both personal and historical in character. Some of the secrets are sad, while others are shocking: "I wish my husband were dead," or "They say my grandfather killed a lot of people."

The political and feminist content of Yoshiko Shimada's works made her a controversial figure in her homeland, which is one of the reasons why she left Japan and moved to Germany in 1993. In 1996 she moved back to Japan, but has continued to exhibit internationally, e.g. at the Asian American Art Centre, New York, 1992; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, 1996; Kwangju City Art Museum, Korea, 1999; Mronier Art Museum, Seoul, 2003; A.R.T. Gallery, Tokyo, 2004; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2005.


Opening: 6 September, 5.00 pm. Opening hours will subsequently be Tuesday-Friday 12.00 pm - 5.00 pm, Saturdays 12.00 pm - 3.00 pm. More information on the two exhibitions is available from the gallery or at: gcw@christinawilson.net.


We look forward to welcoming the public to our new premises, designed by the Danish architects Christina Prip and Sisse Fassio.