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Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995


Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995), also known as "The Tent", was an artwork created by Tracey Emin. The work was a tent with the appliquéd names of, literally, everyone she had ever slept with, but not necessarily in the sexual sense. It achieved iconic status, was owned by Charles Saatchi, and was destroyed in the 2004 Momart London warehouse fire. She has refused to re-create it.

Tracey Emin calls Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 "my tent" or "the tent" and considers it to be one of the two "seminal pieces" she has created (the other being My Bed); she has described both pieces as "seminal, fantastic and amazing work".

Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 was a tent appliquéd with 102 names of the people she had slept with up to the time of its creation in 1995. The title is often misinterpreted as a euphemism indicating sexual partners and the work termed "a list of all the people that Emin has ever had sex with", but is in fact intended more inclusively:

The names include family, friends, drinking partners, lovers and even two numbered foetuses. The name of former boyfriend, Billy Childish, could be seen prominently through the tent opening. The tent was square and coloured blue; its shape was reminiscent of the Margate Shell Grotto, with which Emin was very familiar from childhood; inside on the floor of the tent was the text, "With myself, always myself, never forgetting".

The work was created during a relationship she had in the mid-1990s with Carl Freedman, who had been an early friend of, and collaborator with, Damien Hirst and who had co-curated seminal Britart shows, such as Modern Medicine and Gambler. In 1995 Freedman curated the show Minky Manky at the South London Gallery, where the tent was first shown. At that time Emin had not achieved the level of fame which she was to later, and was mainly known in art circles; she was fortunate to be able to exhibit alongside much better-known artists such as Damien Hirst, Gilbert and George and Sarah Lucas. Emin described the genesis of the work, which turned out unexpectedly to be the highlight of the show:


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