Sophie Calle - Exquisite Pain

Product Information

In the case of the artist’s story, the same photograph is repeated: that of a red telephone in a hotel room, the telephone from which she heard that her love affair had ended. When something ends and it causes you heartbreak like that, it deserves a traditional label, so everyone knows what you’re talking about when you explain it—which I did, over and over again. Elephant and Artsy have come together to present This Artwork Changed My Life, a creative collaboration that shares the stories of life-changing encounters with art. St Bartholomew, one of the original twelve disciples, was sent as an Apostle to Armenia, where he was killed by being skinned alive.

Of course, the morphine injection I received when I had my first encounter was also "exquisite" -- somehow the total annihilation of the pain and the ensuing dream-like sensation is almost worth the pain. We're coming to not just an Islamic culture, but a place where the general public has not been exposed to contemporary art. And it's not stretching things too far to say that it can still be a snug fit for 21st century sculpture. I sat in my room, typing, thinking, “I will stop being obsessed with my own pain, as it surrounds him, on Tuesday at 11.Bartholomew was one of Christ’s disciples, one of the 12 apostles who were with him Jane the crucifixion and witnessed the Ascension. The literal meaning in English for this expression is “the exquisite pain”, however in French there is a deeper and more poetic meaning. If we want to read it as symbolic, we could say that the skin simply represents the outer part of the person; once you remove that and you expose yourself entirely to God (or to oneself), then certainly change takes place.

As I got to know the children I was working with- know what they liked and disliked, their hobbies and their sense of humour- working with them and teaching English in France became really enjoyable. In this simple and intimate performance Forced Entertainment explore how language, memory and forgetting move to contain, preserve or erase events; how people come to terms with trauma. If you go after Corona, do visit the Barts Hospital site and see the small medical museum and the fabulous exteriors. One of Hirst’s most exciting and darkest pieces I’ve ever seen is a short video where he – jolly and charismatic – explains the best way to shoot yourself in the head. As it turns out, loving someone who is already taken will cause emotional heartache for the person whose love is unreciprocated.Each photograph or document is stamped with a number indicating the remaining amount of “days until unhappiness”. The layout and photographs aptly capture and enhance the mood, and the authors story and those of her contributors helped to remind me that pain will fade, the story will be rewritten, and it could be far, far worse. She has a knack for condensing the narratives of other and juxtaposing them alongside her own space.

Because of this sort of almost casual profundity, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Hirst even when some of his work enraged me. According to the myth, Marsyas had the hubris to challenge Apollo, who was God of music as well as many other things. I'm not mocking (exactly); I've suffered this raw extreme of unhappiness myself – but it's tricky to translate to the page.

The exquisite pain in the expression refers to the feeling of wanting someone that you know you can never have, and knowing that you still want to be with them. Yet skin was often a magic ingredient, and so it’s not wholly outrageous to wonder whether or not there’s something esoteric about the familiar image of Bartholomew: the living man standing with all of his muscles and viscera exposed, holding his skin. I think I’ve seen very few of his works, which I would consider exquisite, although more than one of them is reasonably thoughtful. Also known as Great St Bart’s, it is a medieval church (founded 1123) in Smithfield within the City of London. It's interesting to see how she viewed the world during a time of suffering, and how pain can fade away.