Review: Women peer into the lives of others in two Minneapolis art exhibitions

In “The Sleepers,” 1979, French artist Sophie Calle becomes curiously obsessed with watching people sleep, so she invites them to her apartment and invites them to sleep in her bed for eight hours. She photographs them every hour and also records the things they share with her. For her project “Suite Vénitenne,” 1980, she meets a man at an art opening in Paris and follows him to Venice. She photographs him and takes notes like a spy without a clear mission or directive.

In another project, “Voir La Mer,” 2011, she travels to Istanbul, a city that sits on the Black Sea, and takes migrants to the shores of the sea so that she can capture their reactions to seeing the sea for the first time.

Calle’s projects spring from boredom, a desire to explore intimacy, a lack of intimacy, a fascination with other people and a deep pleasure in voyeurism. Her exhibition “Overshare” at the Walker Art Center spans 50 years of work, showcasing art projects that push the boundaries of what’s public and private, and probe deeper questions about the human experience such as life and death, love and heartbreak. Calle is well-known in Europe but less so in America, and this show marks a career milestone for her.

Curator Henriette Huldisch positions Calle as an artist who predicted social media and some people’s desire to “overshare” about themselves, acknowledging the sexist double standard that exists for men and women who consensually decide to share information. Whereas the things we share on social media today also come with metrics and algorithms, Calle’s work does not. She has control.

But that control comes at a price. At times the work is so focused on her perspective that the people in it seem like pawns and that creates a sort of coldness.

Sometimes there is a crack in the control, another perspective.

In “Autobiographies (The Husband),” Calle explains in photos and text from her perspective, how she and now ex-husband Greg Shephard met in the early ‘90s. She said he was “an unreliable man” and for their first date “he showed up a year late.” According to Shephard in the film “No Sex Last Night,” 1992, he went to her art opening in Boston and then tracked her down. He seemed fascinated by and jealous of her success. He wanted to reinvent himself in the same way she did. He desired the power she had as an artist, and so he went along with her on a road trip to California to see what would happen.

In the film, he repeatedly said that he wished he was more attracted to her. She kept repeating the phrase “No sex last night.” Surprisingly, they stopped in Vegas and got married. The film flips back and forth between their two perspectives, giving it the feeling of a reality TV show.

There is a video of Calle’s mother on her death bed tucked away in a gallery that can only be accessed through a little hallway. Visitors appeared trepidatious about entering the gallery. On the hallway wall, Calle has scribbled a note, asking viewers to please not take videos or photos of her mother. But if she really wanted to control the possible dissemination of this video in the age of social media and smartphones, she wouldn’t have put it in the show. Calle allows the viewers some power over the images. Will they take a picture or not?

This is one of the most provocative and engaging exhibitions seen at the Walker in the past five years. The show took three visits to fully digest, and there is a lot of text to read. It’s curious to note that there’s far more text in the ‘70s and ‘80s works than in the “On the Hunt” 2024 section of the exhibit, where she analyzes dating profiles from the late 19th century to the present. She finds the most frequently used words in dating profiles, like a keyword search, making it easy to read for lazy smartphone-distracted viewers. Truly, Calle is always one step ahead.

The word “aftershock” makes one think of a tremor, something unstable, ongoing trauma, war, earthquakes. Yet in the large photography gallery on the third floor of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, JoAnn Verburg’s exhibition of large-scale photographs and moving images feels more akin to a nature sanctuary. Audio of birds chirping overhead, the gurgling sound of running water and photographs of people lounging in nature. Some people in nature even read print newspapers. There are no smartphones. This is the landscape of central Italy, and it feels utterly luxurious.

But something lurks under the surface. In this paradise-looking landscape, Verburg experienced aftershocks of an earthquake, the pandemic and the news of George Floyd’s killing that rocked the world (she splits time between Minneapolis and Italy). The 2020 photograph “Untitled Elias” — of a teenage boy with bright blond hair, his hands in his pockets, staring back at the camera with a slightly peeved look — does call to mind the type of photography people took during the pandemic. People want to be seen, but at a safe distance. People reading a newspaper with eerie headlines like “China aims to ease crisis in Myanmar” reminds of reality but again at a distance.

Verburg poetically captures the countryside of Italy and people in nature and is an incredibly skilled photographer. However, the show’s premise of coping with trauma by taking beautiful photographs feels like an exercise in privilege. An escape from reality or “self-care” would have been a more accurate way to frame it.

Where: Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Mpls.

When: Ends Jan. 26.

Cost: $2-$18.

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed., Fri.-Sun; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thu.

Info: walkerart.org or 612-375-7600.

Where: Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 3rd Av. S., Mpls.

When: Ends Jan. 12.

Cost: Free.

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue., Wed., Fri.-Sun.; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thu.

Info: new.artsmia.org or 612-870-3000.