Artwork Spotlight

Asset Liquification

Jake Weinstein working on the Asset Liquification desks. Photo by Melissa Kelly.

Tracey Emin’s ‘My Bed’ (1998)

Within the basement underbelly of Ministry of Awe lies Asset Liquification, a department where the desks of Ministry workers remain eerily intact. No employees can be found. You see their desks, with their lamps on, documents piled up, and everything suggests they’ve just stepped away—yet they never return. Instead, you're invited to view and engage with their belongings. Who were these people? As a lifelong snooper, I’m gleeful at the prospect of discovering traces of their lives, piecing together identities from the fragments they've left behind.

When we began working on the assemblage sculptures of these desks, I was immediately reminded of confessional works like My Bed by Tracey Emin (b. 1963). Unintentionally created during a four-day period of deep depression following a difficult breakup, Emin submitted her own unmade bed—surrounded by personal items—to the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1999. Deeply personal and vulnerable, My Bed exposed Emin not only to criticism about her work’s artistic merit, but also to public scrutiny of her private life. The piece reignited a perennial question that contemporary artists often face: “Is this art?”

For me, even the most insignificant guest prompts a deep cleaning of my house. The idea of someone seeing my space in a state of disarray feels incredibly exposing. That’s why Tracey Emin’s My Bed resonates so strongly—it’s not just the mess, but the vulnerability of allowing others to witness it without a filter. It challenges the instinct to curate and instead invites confrontation with the raw, unedited self.

Jake Weinstein, the artist responsible for these assemblage sculptures, needs to embody a character of someone who may have worked at Ministry of Awe. Though fictional, these personas are shaped by personal impulses, habits, and memories, making the desks autobiographical in their own right. Like My Bed, which exposed a deeply private space to public scrutiny, these desks invite viewers into an intimate world. But unlike My Bed, where the mess was real and rooted in lived experience, these desks blur the line between fabrication and confession.

You’re invited to enter this space not just as a viewer, but as a quiet intruder—poking through drawers, reading documents, assembling identities from what’s been left behind. In the end, if these fictions reveal fragments of truth, does it really matter whether the person behind the desk ever existed?