My Bed

1998 artwork by Tracey Emin

My Bed is a work by the English artist Tracey Emin. First created in 1998, it was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1999 as one of the shortlisted works for the Turner Prize. It consisted of her bed with bedroom objects in a dishevelled state, and gained much media attention. Although it did not win the prize, its notoriety has persisted. It was sold at auction by Christie’s in July 2014 for £2,546,500.

The idea for My Bed was inspired by a sexual yet depressive phase in the artist's life when she had remained in bed for four days without eating or drinking anything but alcohol. When she looked at the vile, repulsive mess that had accumulated in her room, she suddenly realised what she had created. Emin ardently defended My Bed against critics who treated it as a farce and claimed that anyone could exhibit an unmade bed. To these claims the artist retorted, "Well, they didn't, did they? No one had ever done that before." particularly over the fact that the bedsheets were stained with bodily secretions and the floor had items from the artist's room, such as condoms, underwear with menstrual blood stains, other detritus, and functional, everyday objects, including a pair of slippers. The bed was presented in the state that Emin claimed it had been after languishing in it for several days; at the time she was suffering suicidal depression brought on by relationship difficulties. Two performance artists, Yuan Cai and Jian Jun Xi, jumped on the bed with bare torsos to improve the work, which they thought had not gone far enough. They called their performance Two Naked Men Jump into Tracey's Bed. The men also had a pillow fight

Craig Brown wrote a satirical piece about My Bed for Private Eye entitled My Turd. Emin's former boyfriend, former Stuckist artist Billy Childish, stated that he also had an old bed of hers in the shed which he would make available for £20,000. In a quest for learning values the intervention Making Her Bed was evident by an unknown artist possibly trending towards an art archivist. At the same time if this intervention is a one time razzle the question of causality ensues (of which stage was the first and the latter My Bed vs. Making Her Bed). The whole existence of the work (and its "add on" template) is then further questioned if the making is evident as a plane of existence with emphasis on performance (fourth dimension); combine (third dimension); and anti painting (second dimension). When auctioned by Christie's in July 2014, the piece was sold for a little over £2.5 million.