Conceptual art can be appallingly dry and arcane but in the hands of the French artist Sophie Calle it becomes a richly involving genre.

Her work has all the staples of the toughest conceptualism — ideas with strict rules which are followed immaculately, and then documented in text and photography. But Calle is a great storyteller, and this long overdue retrospective is as compelling and engrossing as any show I have seen this year.

We follow Calle as she obsessively explores set scenarios, delving into the lives of mostly strangers, but also loved ones, often with unsettling invasiveness. Some works are triggered by chance occurrences, like a 1983 piece in which Calle found a man’s address book and, before returning it, photocopied its contents. She then interviewed the friends and acquaintances she found inside to establish more about the owner and published the details in the newspaper Libération. They are shown at the Whitechapel as a group of prints.

In the show’s centrepiece, Take Care of Yourself (2007), she took a lover’s break-up letter (which ended with the instruction in the work’s title), and asked more than 100 women, from actresses and musicians to a criminologist and philologist, to interpret his email according to their profession. The results, in the form of texts, photographs and videos, are displayed in an at times absurd installation — ultimately a defiant celebration of womanhood and a tribute to cultural and intellectual life.

Most of the 13 works in the exhibition contain long texts, meaning that you need several hours to see the show in depth. But so deeply was I pulled into Calle’s strange and compulsive world, I found it difficult to tear myself away.
Until 3 January 2010. Information: www.whitechapelgallery.org