Exhibiting Pain: Sophie Calle's Douleur exquise

This article focuses on the relationship between the subjective and the collective in the work of project artist Sophie Calle through a 'virtual visit' to her mixed-media installation Douleur exquise (1984–2003). Through detailed analysis of the intricate systems of narrative in and between the installation's three parts, it assesses the contribution of Calle's project to two phenomena which are of central importance to cultural production in France and beyond at the start of the twenty-first century. The first is a fascination with l'intime and with punctures or shifts in the public/ private boundary, and the article explores how Douleur exquise develops Calle's customary handling of autofictional tensions and the exposure of self and other. The second is our obsessive memorial imperative, a cultural development to which Calle has not yet formally been linked. The article argues that Calle's installation demonstrates an anthropological interest in cultural constructions of suffering, mourning practices and memorial artefacts. Finally, it suggests that Douleur exquise self-consciously invites us to respond to it as a new kind of monument, one appropriate to process-driven project art. This, the article defines as a 'soft monument'.