“I would have liked things to have turned out differently. Take care of yourself.” read the breakup e-mail that Sophie Calle received from her partner at the time some years ago. Those words triggered the creation of the installation by the same name, which included a multiple and thorough epistolary analysis to understand the causes of the separation.
In Take Care of Yourself, the artist invited different professionals to interpret the letter, each from the point of view of their field of expertise. Altogether, she gathered 107 conclusions drawn by women in the fields of journalism, style correction, acting, singing, dancing, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, among many others.
The result of this exercise is a microscopic look at a breakup, carefully dissecting each possible meaning of the different parts of a farewell note, by means of photographic portraits, written studies and video performances expressing different ideas on love, pain, sex and identity.
Sophie Calle is internationally renowned for using aspects of her personal life as a source of inspiration. Her work is about exploring human relations using provocative, sometimes even controversial methods, since her narrations —often told through photographs, videos and text— reveal, or at least seem to reveal, the artist's very own intimacy and that of those surrounding her.
Coproduced by Centro Cultural Kirchner - Argentine Ministry of Culture with the support of the French Embassy in Argentina, and the Institut Français