Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin has a profound oeuvre, which is of disclosure, revealing intimate details from her life, questioning society and universal emotions. Integrating her personal life into the work creates an engagement with a deep sensibility and intimacy with the viewer and artist.  This is illustrated in Tracey Emins work “My Bed,” where she shows and dialects her most personal space, contained with all her embarrassing glory. Confronting the viewer with shock of such a personal diminishment, disclosing her imperfect and insecure self as the rest of us. Confronted with the uncovered candid manner of the unbosom truth represented in this work contentiously argues the affective response which is completely powerful and engaging but the cognitive and conceptual response acquires the viewer to feel disturbed and often nauseating installation when conceptualized. The affective response engages the viewer long after the encounter of the work, being mesmerized and alluded to decipher why such a demeaning work has an empowering and intimate engagement with the artist.

The installation, which is spilling the edges with detritus, vomit stains, used condoms, bottles, dirty clothes and anything that was present in the room, is activated and charged into an artwork, presenting the symbolic qualities to the progression of life, a place of birth, death, sex, fertility, illness and loss. A work, which demonetises the condition of a traditional profound artwork, appears absence of any skill and craftsmanship controversial thought and emotion. But in fact when obliterating this simply appearance, the work becomes notably a multifaceted sculptural installation, condensed with various contained statements, which in fact evokes a sensibility to emotion and thought.