She Watched
She Watched
Signed Print
Tracey Emin
Price data unavailable
There aren't enough data points on this work for a comprehensive result. Please speak to a specialist by making an enquiry.
54 x 63cm, Edition of 50, Lithograph
Auction Results
Track auction value trend
Meaning & Analysis
This ghostly lithograph was executed by Tracey Emin in 2017, and forms part of the Reclining Nudes collection. Emin frames the composition with a thin black line at the top of the work, hanging down to mark the corners of a room’s ceiling. Within this imagined room there is a bed - an iconic Emin motif - at the centre. A nude figure - likely Emin herself - appears sleeping on this bed, printed in a cloudy wash of grey. To the right and left of this focal point are other forms printed in the same grey wash, like ghosts crowding around the central figure on her bed.
Emin’s bed has been a motif that has haunted her career since her seminal installation My Bed in 1998. The bed is a subject that Emin has returned to in more subtle ways, but printed works like She Watched reveal her ongoing fascination with the intimate and personal space of the bedroom.
Within this work, Emin pictures a nude reclining figure on a simply rendered bed. Around the bed are three grey forms. While these forms are not distinctly figurative, they appear like ghostly presences and therefore speak to Emin’s spirituality. Emin’s interest in mysticism has led her art to reflect a sense of transcendence, particularly as she has matured. While Emin’s bed of 1998 was a site of personal trauma and isolation, She Watched reveals Emin’s increasing awareness that even when she is alone she is never truly lonely.