Shortly before the opening of my exhibition À toi de faire, ma mignonne at the Musée Picasso in Paris, a storm damaged my storeroom and mold spores infiltrated Les Aveugles [The Blind], one of the series that was to be exhibited. For a show that commemorated the anniversary of Picasso's death and evoked his ghostly presence, as well as my own eventual demise, the idea of decomposition seemed fitting. The restorers determined that, to avoid any risk of contamination, it was preferable to destroy the works. Responding to the urgency of the situation, I decided to stage their absence, presenting partially empty walls where The Blind should have been. However, they held too much significance in my life to simply throw them in a landfill. It was then that I recalled artist Roland Topor's idea of burying an old sweater that he could not bring himself to give away nor discard.

The Cryptoporticus at Arles lends itself to such a ceremony: the previous year, during the Rencontres, the humidity that prevails there had insidiously attacked the photographs on display and fungus had won the day. Instead of protecting them, the venue had paradoxically precipitated their destruction. That this should have happened in a city that plays a major role in the preservation of images is not without irony. I therefore imagined that I could bury my blind here, allowing them to proceed with their decomposition, and that their words, which speak solely of beauty, would pervade the bedrock of the city.

I noticed that the rot had carefully selected its victims. Besides The Blind, it had only affected those works of mine that spoke of death or demise, as if they had lost their immunity. Among them were paintings of my mother's last words, bouquets of dried flowers, pictures of graves, and a photograph of my mattress on which a man had immolated himself. And since I was offering a second death to my dying works, I also added things from my life that no longer serve any purpose, but which I can neither give nor throw away.

Sophie Calle