![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/12770022_crop-678x1024.jpg\")
Tracey Emin. Portrait by Melanie Matthieu<\/p>\n Tracey Emin. Portrait by Melanie Matthieu<\/p>\n
Tracey Emin\u2019s famous bed is the central work in the show \u201cPrivat\u201d, at Frankfurt\u2019s Schirn Kunsthalle<\/a>, which sets out to explore the disappearance of privacy from our everyday lives. It marks the middle of the exhibition and is placed after works by such sharers of intimacy as Mark Morrisroe and Nan Goldin<\/a>, and before a new generation of artists who cull what others share on social media and stream it into their work. But what does privacy and the need to share emotions mean to Emin herself?<\/p>\n Interview by Hili Perlson<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Sleek: How do you guard your privacy?<\/strong> Emin: I don\u2019t have a Facebook account. The studio tweets, but nothing personal. And I write a lot of letters. I write a lot to my friends. I send a lot of physical letters.\u00a0<\/p>\n When we made this issue of Sleek, we were talking about how it seems \u201cuncool\u201d to show emotions in art works now\u2026<\/strong> It\u2019s actually quite super cool! If you want to be really, really cool right now, you put the emotion in your work. Edvard Munch is now on view at Tate Modern, and it\u2019s packed! This wouldn\u2019t have happened 20 years ago. There\u2019s a big change in what people have been responsive to and what they want to look at. People are tired of cynicism and unhappiness, they just actually want to synch into something that they can actually feel.\u00a0<\/p>\n Were you angry when you made \u201cMy Bed\u201d?<\/strong> No, I was sad. When you\u2019re sad you can\u2019t be angry, because sadness is overbearing. It\u2019s good to be angry, then at least you go and smash things up, when you\u2019re sad you just go\u2026 [she folds in].\u00a0<\/p>\n I heard you read your poem in Miami last year during a salon talk at Art Basel Miami Beach<\/a> about poetry and art\u2026<\/strong> I was so happy in Miami, in fact I was so happy that I couldn\u2019t write anything \u2013 I thought, oh I\u2019ll write something there because I was there for a week. I write every day, you know! But I had such a good time, enjoying myself so much, I didn\u2019t have time to write!\u00a0<\/p>\n Does writing for you necessarily comes from sadness, too? Suffering, doubting?<\/strong> All of the above, but also loving as well \u2013 when I\u2019m in love with someone I write to them all the time. And it comes from an emotional reaction. So that explains the Miami poem. People who know me thought it was really funny. I just read Thomas Mann\u2019s \u201cThe Black Swan\u201d, and it really upset me. To the point where I was crying for three days, literally. Because I\u2019m getting old. I\u2019ll be 50 soon, and I just felt so old when I finished the book. She dies happy in the end, delusional in a sense, and it made me wonder how delusional I am about my life. I identified with the actual swan, the snarling black swan.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why? Your new work includes more drawings. What else is different since the bed?<\/strong> I don\u2019t smoke any more. I don\u2019t have sex any more, I don\u2019t drink booze any more. I don\u2019t stain my sheets any more, I don\u2019t take contraception, I don\u2019t use condoms anymore, I don\u2019t have my period anymore, what else don\u2019t I do that\u2019s in that bed? Hmmm. Many, many things\u2026 I make drawings of flowers and birds. You know, you can do a drawing of a puppy and you can write a love poem, and both can become really intimate. Just because it is what it looks like or seems na\u00efve, doesn\u2019t mean that it hasn\u2019t got some heightened influence behind it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Does the emotional rollercoaster of menopause go into your work now?<\/strong> All the work that I\u2019ve been making is about seeing myself from the outside. The work is always coming from farther out, and now it\u2019s over here somewhere [points above her head] looking down on me. And that\u2019s to do with going through menopause, and that\u2019s why I identified with the \u201cThe Black Swan\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s not a book for a woman of my age to read. You should read it when you\u2019re in your twenties, and misunderstand it completely.<\/p>\n In some African tribes postmenopausal women are at risk of being considered witches\u2026<\/strong> I think that was the case with me since the age of 13! It isn\u2019t something that just hit me now. But yeah, there is a stigma about it. Especially because I don\u2019t look 50. I don\u2019t behave it. Even my doctor told me I\u2019m just too young for menopause. But I am, and it\u2019s getting unbearable. \u00a0<\/p>\n Does being lonely bother you a lot?<\/strong> It\u2019s a situation I am sometimes really happy with. A couple of weeks ago in New York, I was sitting alone and a man asked me if I wanted to join him. I said, \u201cThanks, I\u2019m happy where I am.\u201d And he said, \u201cI know, you look really happy, that\u2019s why I asked.\u201d It almost made me join him. Sometimes I just need a hug, or when everything\u2019s a bit too much I want to share it with someone. I\u2019ve been on my own for years and years now. If I could just be completely content to know I\u2019ll never have sex again, I\u2019ll never be with anyone again, that would be amazing. But it\u2019s hard.\u00a0<\/p>\n So sex for you is always connected to emotions?<\/strong> Yes. I can go and sleep with someone tonight if I wanted to shag. I can shag someone on the plane. That\u2019s not hard, is it? But some people do just live like that and then suddenly they meet someone. I\u2019m not like that. I\u2019m much more, I don\u2019t know, romantic I suppose. I went to a tarot card reader in New York, and she said that someone has set a curse on me, but before I was born, when my mum was pregnant.\u00a0<\/p>\n How unfair!<\/strong> I know! She said the curse is that I\u2019ll never love. But, she said \u2013 it was actually good \u2013 she said I\u2019ve done so many good deeds in the last few years that I\u2019ve worked the curse off. And by January, it\u2019s completely over!\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Taken from Sleek 36 “The Head & Heart Issue”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/strong>Because it was angry. And the only angry character in the book is the swan. I\u2019m angry because I\u2019m lonely. I\u2019m really fucking lonely [laughs].\u00a0<\/p>\n