A t around 1pm on a busy Saturday in the Tate London Gallery two Chinese men stripped off their shirts and proceeded to jump around and have a pillow fight on Tracy Emin's winning entry for the 1999 Turner prize My Bed. They were arrested for criminal damage and the exhibition closed for the remainder of the day.

The men, Yuan Cai, 43 and Jian Jun Xi, 37 who handed out flyers before the event are performance artists who stage their interaction with other artworks as a framework to impart a message. In this case, to call attention to the presence of Chinese artists in the UK.....as well as to expose the sensationalism of contemporary British art and its press. [1]

The press however, allready divided over the merit of the bed had a field day in reporting the action which in turn became equally as sensational as the artwork itself. Emin was reportedly nonplussed by the action.

'The bed was there. It was like an invitation,' explained Cai, simultaneously chain-smoking and waving his arms. 'We thought we'd make a new work, like theater.'[2]

Accross their bodies they had scrawled messages 'We had 'isms' all over our bodies. Like idealism, internationalism, anti-stuckism all relating to our work.' [3] Stuckism it should be noted is a "movement" rallying against such art typified by the Young British Artists, conceptual art and notably emin after Emin had called a former lover - Billy Childish's paintings "stuck stuck stuck".

The men reportedly jumped around for about 15 minutes before they were apprehended by security where one of them tried to scare the guards 'By pretending to be a kung fu artist.'[4]. Perhaps explaining why they were also thrown to the ground.

Although they were arrested they were released without charge. Regretably so for Emin who said 'It was upsetting and disturbing - a criminal offence...I wouldn't go round to someone's house, smash up a coffee table and call that art. It's terrorism - like some failed artist threatening to jump off Waterloo bridge unless they're given a gallery.'[5]

For the artists, this was one of a series of witty yet serious performances designed to question the politics of art and the art establishment. Other actions include pissing on Marcel Duchamps Fountain, the figuratively titled ’ Two Artists swim across the Thames, Two artists run naked across Westminster Bridge with Tony Bear, where Tony Bear was a stuffed panda bear. Similarly they named this action Two Naked Men Jump Into Tracey's Bed.

The show also featured artists Damien Hirst and Chris Offili, themselves, no strangers to having works on the receiving end of an attack.

 

1.Tracey Emin's My Bed, 1998/1999
Deborah Cherry , Sharp Journal

2. Guerrilla artists' defend their pranks
CNN.com September 12, 2000

3. Feathers fly at art show
BBC News Sunday, October 24, 1999

4. Ibid

5.'It's a new Cultural Revolution'
Nick Paton Walsh Sunday June 11, 2000 The Observer

 

Stunt artists bare all for London
Saturday, 29 July, 2000