On the Move: My Bed, 1998-99

‘On the Move, 'My Bed' 1998-99’ from 'The Art of Tracey Emin' focuses on the different installations of a single work of art, in Japan, USA, and in the UK, indicating the contrasting range of meanings ascribed to it in these different locations.

The essay innovatively contended that, despite the artist’s distinctive anti-intellectual stance and the themes of much critical writing, her works are embedded in wider issues of migration, cultural transmission, and diaspora, and that they engage in complex questions of cultural difference. It departed from the populist and biographical readings of Emin’s art and of this particular piece. The essay demonstrated how, at the Turner installation, 'My Bed' was accompanied by works that highlighted these issues of migration: a textile piece with its imagery of the Union flag drew attention to contemporary debates about national identity. Adjacent video pieces highlighted and projected the artist’s ethnicity, her divided and doubled familial and cultural background.

The essay located 'My Bed' within debates about Britain’s social fabric and relations, notably sleeping rough in public spaces, which has subsequently all but disappeared. It also contextualised 'My Bed' within the debates about what was perceived as rising migration into Britain. Setting a historical frame for the work of the debates of the mid-late 1990s about ‘fortress Europe’, the borders of Europe, and Turkey’s admission to the European Union, the essay argued that the Turner installation equally engaged with questions of European identity, mapping a contested space of complex identities from its western border to its east-most extension.

Deborah Cherry: Current Research

I am Associate Director of TrAIN, the research centre for the practice and study of transnational art, identity and nation. I am also a co-director of Critical Curating, a research network and project established between Central Saint Martins, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the University of Sussex which is investigating the nature of curating both contemporary art and historical art and design, and the place of curating in research.
My research interests are at present focused on a study of contemporary art and the senses, relations between the senses, the prominence given to and turns away from the visual, and the implications of post-colonial, transnational and diaspora studies.
I am the editor of Art History, the Journal of the Association of Art Historians, a Membre Titulaire of the Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art, and a panel member of panel 2 of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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