missworld:

Tracey Emin

My Bed

1998
Mattress, linens, pillows, objects

79 x 211 x 234 cm

A consummate storyteller, Tracey Emin engages the viewer with her candid exploration of universal emotions. Well-known for her confessional art, Tracey Emin reveals intimate details from her life to engage the viewer with her expressions of universal emotions. Her ability to integrate her work and personal life enables Emin to establish an intimacy with the viewer.

Tracey shows us her own bed, in all its embarrassing glory. Empty booze bottles, fag butts, stained sheets, worn panties: the bloody aftermath of a nervous breakdown. By presenting her bed as art, Tracey Emin shares her most personal space, revealing she’s as insecure and imperfect as the rest of the world.

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I personally adore and have done so for a long time, Tracey Emin’s art because she is genuine, extremely vulnerable and she’s not a bullshit artist who sits around extrapolating on stuff that means nothing more than another dollar in the pocket of some asshole.

I read her book, and came away from it with an even bigger sense of appreciation for her and her work. She is to me, like a confessional poet, someone baring her soul, her heart, her body to tell a story and provoke a reaction, an emotion, any human reaction. She’s one of my favorite artists because she lives art, she goes beyond what it is to create art and be an artist.

I was besotted by Emin’s work when I was studying art in 1998. I think the confessional nature of her work influenced me in my own personal journaling and then later, blogging.

This particular piece really guts me because I have lived this several times.