The bedexists outside of time and yet entirely defined by it as an accumulation of our lives. It is also a site for much more than sleep. Hours can be lost to a bed while entwined with another person; a one-time encounter can become a sleepless nightโ the bed as evidence of a slow burn or a blitz of passion. Who can afford to spend hours in bed is itself increasingly contested in our production-driven present where rest allowed to โand divided betweenโ classes is vastly unequal.
I have spent many mornings from the vantage of my bed, assessing the existential corners of my own life. We are born in beds, and die in them too. In it, a siamese cat perches upon a Rococo-style bed, roped off in an uncrossable museum tableau. Her paintings capture a liminal state change marking childhood, dreamworlds, spirits, and ghosts. Throughout art history, the bed has served as a site of celebration, contestation, and protest many times over.
Rachel Whiteread cast the undersides of beds during the s forming tombe-like, lifeless bodies laying for a final time. Her beds became places of mourning. Dreams or sleepless nights, long-time lovers or quick flings, repose or lazy naps โ we may leave our beds to chart our days but our residue remains with them, marking our own mostly private passages. Throughout art history the bed as a site and symbol has served as a rich cultural, political, and personal reference.
This exhibition assembles works that continue this tradition, examining the bed as an object, symbol, and site holy, restorative, satirical, critical, of nightmares, or discarded. See the exhibition.
.png "Teen girls in Montreal")
