“I am an alcoholic obsessed with herself.”
Tracey Emin
The work consists of a tent filled with the names of all the people the artist had slept with. These were lined up and included two miscarriages, her twin brother, her sexual partners, and relatives who had slept over. Evidently, the title of the piece was misleading, playing with the morbid curiosity of the spectator, when in reality the artist poured a far deeper and more intimate meaning into her work.
“Everyone I Have Ever Slept With” or “The Tent” marked a turning point in contemporary art and gained an iconic status. The interior houses 102 names of all the people she slept with until 1995. It has names of people she had sex with on the bed or against the wall, and in other, more poignant cases, she describes snuggling next to her grandmother and taking a nap together. “I used to lay in her bed and hold her hand. We used to listen to the radio together and nod off to sleep. You don’t do that with someone you don’t love and don’t care about.”
Friends, family, drinking buddies, and lovers are all cooped up in a small space, but some hold a prominent place in the tent. One of her former boyfriends, the artist Billy Childish, is accompanied by the words, “With myself, always myself, never
forgetting.”
She created this art work while in a relationship with Carl Freedman, who later on displayed the work in the Minky Manky show at the South London Gallery. The tent became the focal point of the exhibition and the newspapers jumped on board the drama with a journalist stating, “she’s slept with everyone –even the curator!” Charles Saatchi, one of the most prominent art collectors in the world, acquired the piece. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in a fire in Momart, London in 2004. She refused to recreate the piece and was unjustly met with mockery and scorn by the public media.
Absurd, ridiculous, and primitive are some of the words used in the contemporary art circles to describe Tracey Armin’s work. In fact, “My Bed” gained global notoriety, as it sits in one of the most eminent art institutions in Europe, and it is basically an unmade bed covered with every day objects, including condoms and pads. This art piece won the Turner award and was sold for over US$150,000.
In her eyes, “My Bed” and “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With” are fantastic and wonderful representations of her creative spirit. After the tragic Momart fire, she was shocked by the virulence of the media when she refused to replicate her tent. “The majority of the British public have no regard or no respect to what me and my peers do, to the point that they laugh at a disaster like a fire.” The inspiration of this piece came to her ten years before she even created it, and obviously recreating the piece would be void of meaning and emotion.
The first few years of Emin’s life were rife with difficulties. During her childhood and teenage years she shared a home with squatters, was raped when she was 13 years old, suffered two abortions, and struggled with alcoholism. Despite these obstacles, she has been crowned as a prominent figure in the art world. Her work is inspired by Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele, and her world since her teenage years revolved around alcohol, drugs, and art.
She is positioned next to other renowned figures like Damien Hirst, Chapman brothers, Mark Ofili, among others. She began to be known as one of the most promising figures in the British art scene, as her work revolved around exposing her personal life in pictures, drawings, videos, and installations.
Her work goes against the grain of what is possible in the art world, and without fear she crosses every boundary. It is this same dialogue she creates with her audience; she hits you in the gut so you feel all the dark, pent up emotions she is experiencing as she creates these installations. Being sucker punched is one of the holy grails of contemporary art. There is nothing more to say; all the beauty in the world has been painted and sculpted; irreverence was portrayed by the Dadaists and the dreamscape conquered by the Surrealists. There is now a new dialogue that speaks directly to the spectator, to you, making you cry, feel rage, and feel your skin tingle with the force and power of an artist’s work, just like Tracey Emin.