CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/17/2026

Sophie Calle finishes the unfinished

It’s 272 pages, housed in a lay-flat, Swiss-bound, three-flap cover. It’s got thumb-index section tabs and button closures. It’s illustrated with 140 color reproductions and 60 black-and-white images. And it collects all of the unfinished or “failed” works of art so far conceived but abandoned by Sophie Calle in the course of a long career known especially for courting failure. Published to catalog the artist’s 2024 exhibition, À toi de faire, ma mignonne, this provocative inventory begins with a quote by Pablo Picasso: “I have a horror of something finished. Death is final. A revolver shot finishes off. The not completely achieved is life.” To which Calle responds: “But when my life comes to an end, what will become of all the ideas that went nowhere, waiting for their moment in drawers and boxes? Before I disappear, I decided to inventory the drafts, the attempts, the abandoned projects. To give life to my intentions. To finish the unfinished.”