Tracey Emin says My Bed would be 'tidy, clean and boring' if she made it today
tracey emin has told broadcasters that her 1998 installation My Bed would be "tidy", "clean" and "boring" if she made it today, and that reinstalling the work now can feel like handling a "crime scene".
Tracey Emin's My Bed back at Tate Modern
The 1998 installation, long notorious for its stained sheets and surrounding detritus, is back on display at Tate Modern as part of the career retrospective Tracey Emin: A Second Life, which opens on Friday. The piece was first shown at the Tate Gallery almost 30 years ago and caused a stir for depicting a dishevelled bedroom scene scattered with cigarettes, alcohol, underwear and condoms.
What’s in the bed and why it is fragile
The installation contains intimately specific items: used condoms, empty vodka bottles and cigarette butts, and the artist has described a system of little pockets and boxes that hold two safety pins, an apple core and individual bags for other objects. She said the bed can only be shown about every five years and only for a limited time because of the fragility of everything involved; small changes were made about 20 years ago when Nurofen and headache pills were swapped for health-and-safety reasons.
Hazmat suits, crime-scene comparisons and logistics
Speaking on the Ready To Talk podcast with Emma Barnett, Dame Tracey said a hazmat suit must be worn when installers handle the work. "It is like a crime scene, " she said, adding that the condition and packing of each item make installation "phenomenal" and tightly controlled. She also said she no longer owns the bed and that the Tate is responsible for its identity as an artwork.
How the work began and the personal cost
My Bed was created after a depressive episode in which the artist spent four days in bed, and Emin has described the piece as inspired by a sexual yet depressive phase in her life. She told interviewers the bed "kept me alive" during that period and that she "nearly lost my life in that bed, " a memory that left her moved to tears when she saw the installation returned to display. She has said she "could cry now" at seeing it again and later also said, "I feel like crying now. "
How the artist views the work now
At 62, the Londoner said if she remade the installation today the bedding would be "ridiculously tidy" and the sheets would have a "1600 thread count"; she added an imagined companion to the bed would be "my two cats, maybe a few love letters. " Emin said those luxuries feel like a reward for having lived through a much messier youth and young womanhood, and that she would tell her younger self not to smoke.
Sale, honours and health since My Bed's first showing
My Bed was sold at auction by Christie's in 2014 for more than £2. 5m and has been loaned back to Tate Modern for the retrospective. Emin rose to prominence in the 1990s as one of the Young British Artists alongside Damian Hirst and Sarah Lucas. In 2024 she was honoured with a damehood for services to British art, and she has said she was given a four-year "all clear" from cancer after a diagnosis and treatment that included major surgery; she was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2020 and underwent surgery including a urostomy.
The retrospective’s return of My Bed brings together those contours of fame, recovery and memory that the artist has described over decades; the exhibition opens on Friday and the Tate will manage the work’s future displays and conservation on a restricted schedule.
