My Bed

When Tracey Emin aired her dirty laundry in the 1999 Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain, she set a new standard for confessional art. She conceived of the installation, titled My Bed (1998), after a long, bedridden bender following a bad break-up. When Emin finally left her sheets, she examined the mess she’d created. Crumpled tissues, period-stained clothing, cigarettes, empty vodka bottles, a pregnancy test, lubricant, and condoms surrounded her bed. She decided it was a work of art

Emin first transported the bed and its accompanying detritus to Tokyo’s Sagacho Exhibition Space for a 1998 show, then to the Tate the following year. Though Emin lost the prestigious Turner Prize to Steve McQueen, the work became a media sensation and launched her career—even if some critics hated it. (The Guardian’s Adrian Searle wrote that the piece was an “endlessly solipsistic, self-regarding homage” to the artist, and chided: “Tracey, you are a bore.”)

In an email to Artsy, Tate Liverpool curator Darren Pih described the work as a “form of assemblage art” that “almost resembles a crime scene.” Viewers can read the component pieces like detectives, reviewing forensic evidence. Yet My Bed also elicits warmer, more personal responses. It remains one of contemporary art’s most striking depictions of vulnerability, a self-portrait that doesn’t veer from the messiness of depression and heartbreak. In particular, it appealed to viewers who connected their own painful experiences to those implied by Emin’s installation.

Alina Cohen