Coming to One's Senses: Diaries and the Materiality of Mourning in Sophie Calle's Rachel, Monique

• Main Author: Sonia Catherine Wilson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Groningen Press 2017-04-01
• Series: European Journal of Life Writing
• Subjects: diary; mourning; the sensory; sophie calle
• Online Access: https://ejlw.eu/article/view/31485

After a woman's death certain material objects, commonly referred to as 'personal effects', remain. Diaries are sometimes among these. This essay focuses on the trajectory taken by one mother's diaries in particular, examining the shifts in meaning effected by the circumstances in which they are passed on to the daughter and by their subsequent emergence into the daughter's work in 2012. Since her mother's death in 2006, the internationally established writer, photographer and installation artist Sophie Calle has staged a series of installations consisting of material markers of mourning. The diaries enter this installative series in 2012. This essay investigates how Calle's engagement with the diaries dialogues with existing cultural representations of The Mother's Diaries and explores the effects of their display on conventions of mourning and exhibiting practices.