08-06-2025
02-05-2025
16-04-2025
15-04-2025
06-04-2025
29-03-2025
20-03-2025
11-03-2025
11-03-2025
28-02-2025
21-02-2025
12-12-2024
29-07-2024
Bibilography
16 April 2025 - my bunk bed vs Tracy Emins, My bed
(Emin 1998)
When I first encountered the Turner Prize Work My Bed (Emin 1998), I was still wondering whether vulnerability could be effectively embedded into an installation without resorting to theatrics. Emin's work is raw but not performative. It is a static site of collapse, care, and chaos. In her installation, the unmade bed becomes a diary. It isn’t just a sculpture of sleep, but a freeze-frame of aftermath. I return to this work now, in the context of my own bunk bed piece, and the connection feels more than symbolic. I’m interested in the bed as a transitional site, one where bodies rest but also confront memory.
Emin's work makes no effort to aestheticise the discomfort. In my own practice, I’ve tried to preserve that honest impulse. The softness of a bed together with the personal, intimate stories of conversations offer a pause. They allow space for talk that might not unfold in a gallery context. Her infamous, controversial work of My Bed, helped me consider the politics of intimacy. It challenged me to consider what is visible and what remains unspoken, especially when the topic of home is discussed.
Where Emin’s work crystallised a private moment into a public one, I intended to allow for a shared moment to emerge in real time. Her work gave me a structure for thinking about presence, which is not a spectacle, but something to be felt, held quietly, and then let go.