Do you think that elements such as your private spaces, traumas, and experiences can become art? Tracey Emin provides an answer to this. Her challenging, yet at times beautiful, works are enough to capture people's attention. I too was captivated by the storytelling in her work and found myself looking for her documentary. In this film, she speaks honestly about her career, her skills in creating a wide variety of works, and personal themes such as autobiography, memory, desire, and identity. Early in the film, she says: "I’m an artist because I’m a creative person. If I always say, if I didn’t make art, I’d probably be dead. But let’s, let’s be more realistic about that, if I didn’t make art, and I’ve done well in life, then I probably would not go into retail or something, and I would probably be the person in the shop that would be always organizing the displays and always making the coat hangers look better and always making the notice board look nice in the canteen and stuff like that. I’m a genuinely creative person." (Tracey Emin 3:58) Watching this scene, I wondered why she calls herself a genuinely creative person, and it made me eager to see her works as soon as possible.
Tracey Emin is well-known for her works that candidly reflect her life and experiences, and is a contemporary artist from England who hit the art scene in the late 1980s due to controversies over contemporary art. Her works convey her vulnerability and honest feelings to the audience by using various media, including paintings, installation art, neon texts, and drawings. Emin is not just seeking visual beauty or form, but focuses on expressing the feelings and experiences she felt in life instantly and intuitively. That's why her work is very personal, but it has the power to connect and empathize with her experiences.
Tracey Emin with her My Bed at Christie's, London | Credit: PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo
For example, My Bed (1998) is centered around her actual unmade bed. Surrounding it are intimate personal items such as stained sheets, used condoms, empty bottles, and cigarette butts. The piece documents a period of deep depression and emotional vulnerability following a traumatic breakup and serves as a raw self-portrait showing the private suffering and vulnerability experienced by a woman. Through this work, Emin reveals the grime that exists in a woman's private space, evokes strong emotional reactions from viewers, and evokes reflection on the themes of pain, isolation, and sexuality. She stated, "The bed was for me. I made the bed for me. I was laying in bed, and I thought, 'This is really bad. This whole situation in my life is just so bad, and what am I going to do about it?'" (18:36) regarding her opinion on the work.
However, when this work was exhibited at Tate, one of the leading contemporary art museums in Britain, the public’s response was not entirely positive. There were reactions mixed with criticism that the work was dirty, disgusting, immoral, and not art. For example, Adrian Searle of The Guardian, once a supporter of Emin, harshly criticized My Bed as "an endlessly solipsistic, self-regarding homage to yourself ... Tracey, you are a bore." (Guardian) Furthermore, it was even harshly criticized as representing the downfall of feminism.
Trace Emin, My Bed, 1988 (Tate Britian)
All the same, Emin’s My Bed, though it may look like a mess on the surface, contains a powerful tension within it. It is the tension between presence and absence. The bed had her traces on it and was filled with objects. It was filled with her traces, smells, and pieces of life. But at the same time, she was not there herself. Looking at the work, there are traces that she might have just lain there, but because of her absence, it also looks somehow empty. The place she left behind, that is, the space of absence, forms the very essence of the work. This tension makes the viewers feel the pain that comes from lack. The bed is a very private space, but because the owner has disappeared, the emptiness fills that vacancy.
This work should also be viewed while thinking more about the symbolism of the bed. The bed is the place most closely connected with human life. It is where we sleep, where we make love, where we lie sick, and where we face death. Within the bed, humans sometimes share with others, sometimes overcome grief, and eventually it is also the space where the existence of “me” is forgotten. In other words, it is the point where life and death, intimacy and solitude, and presence and absence intersect. (image journal)
Another work we can look at is Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1995). This installation consists of a large canvas tent, inside of which are hand-stitched the names of everyone she had slept with from 1963 to 1995. This work brazenly revealed her private life. Such a provocative piece was sometimes dismissed by critics as an act of provocative sexual exposure. Melanie McGrath, a British journalist and author, said, "The piece that made her famous, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95 1995, leaves me cold. I have thought about why I don’t like it. It’s the tent. For me, the tent is too crudely symbolic. The tent is womb, home, exile, intimacy, loneliness done out in nylon. Where’s the mystery in the tent?” (Melanine McGrath, Tate)
Tracey Emin, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1953 - 1995
But is this work really just a crude symbol? Many of the names in Everyone I Have Ever Slept With are not actually people with whom Emin had sexual relations. The work is not simply about sex; it is literally about sleeping—about the intimate act of lying in bed with another person. Such acts can occur after sexual activity, but often they happen even without it. In fact, one of the names was her grandmother's. She commented on this work as follows: "People said, 'Oh, who's interested in how many people she shagged.' Good point. No one should be. But the tent wasn't about that. It was about how many people I'd slept with or been intimate with, whether it was sexually or just sleep-wise. People went inside the tent, and by the time they came out, they were thinking of all the people they'd slept with, the people they'd been close to, and that's how the tent worked." (15:07)
In conclusion, Tracy Emin's work shows that personal experiences, memories, and even trauma can be transformed into powerful artistic expressions. Through My Bed, and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, she questions the audience about personal space, personal experiences and trauma, and existence and absence. It is dangerous to simply evaluate her work on the surface. Her work contains very symbolic meaning, and the audience must reflect on it and trace her thoughts. This is to invite the audience to her own space to reflect on the history of experiences, relationships, and emotions. Her art is not merely about exhibiting private spaces but about inviting the audience to reflect on the histories of experiences, relationships, and emotions. Emin reminds us that when the most private parts of life are shared, they can evoke universal empathy and turn personal emotions into collective understanding and compassion. Ultimately, through her work she asks us a question. How can our personal stories, even those that are painful or hidden, be expressed in ways that connect with others?
Workcited:
“Tracey Emin.” Kanopy, www.kanopy.com/en/ccad/video/46577. Accessed 27 Sept. 2025.
“The Empty Bed: Tracey Emin and the Persistent Self.” Image Journal, 7 Dec. 2016, imagejournal.org/article/empty-bed-tracey-emin-persistent-self/.
“Controversy over Bed Will Not Rest.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 23 Oct. 1999, www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/oct/23/fiachragibbons1?utm_source=chatgpt.com.
McGrath, Melanie. “Something’s Wrong.” Tate, www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/tracey-emin-2590/somethings-wrong. Accessed 27 Sept. 2025.
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