Sophie Calle is back in Berlin with her first solo show in the city in more than twenty years. Is It Better? runs at the Hamburger Bahnhof from 13 November 2026 to 4 April 2027. It brings together six bodies of work from three decades, in photography, text, installation and video. Sam Bardaouil, the museum's director, curated it with Lisa Hörstmann.
The starting point is a Berlin work. In 1996, the year the Hamburger Bahnhof opened as a museum, Calle photographed places in East Berlin where GDR emblems had been taken down after reunification and asked passers-by to describe what used to be there. The result, The Detachment, is in the museum's collection, and the exhibition takes its cue from it. For the museum's thirtieth anniversary she has made a new work about the former Palast der Republik and the rebuilt Berlin Palace that replaced it. The work will stay in the collection as a gift.
What you will see
The largest piece is Les fantômes d'Orsay (2022), shown for the first time since Calle made it for the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Between 1978 and 1981 she spent time almost every day in Room 501 of the abandoned hotel in the old Gare d'Orsay, a station that, like the Hamburger Bahnhof, later became a museum. The installation collects objects, photographs and notes from that room. Other works deal with the act of looking, among them the video installation Voir la mer (2011), in which people who had never seen the sea face it for the first time.
Calle, born in Paris in 1953, became known for projects that blur her own life and other people's: following strangers, taking a job as a chambermaid to photograph guests' belongings, turning a break-up email into a work for 107 women. She represented France at the 2007 Venice Biennale.
Good to know
- Opening: Thursday 12 November, from 7pm, free and without registration, with Calle present.
- Anniversary weekend: on 14–15 November the museum is open for 30 hours with free admission. Curator Lisa Hörstmann gives tours of the show on Saturday at 2pm (German) and 4pm (English).
- Public tours: "Sophie Calle – Overview" from 22 November.
- Catalogue: published by Silvana Editoriale in the Hamburger Bahnhof catalogue series.
- Hours and tickets: see the venue page. Thursdays are open until 8pm.