General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20267 min read

Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)

Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014–2015) was an endurance performance artwork by Columbia University visual arts senior Emma Sulkowicz, in which she carried a dormitory mattress with her wherever she went on the Columbia campus. Sulkowicz conceived the work as her senior thesis and as a protest against the university's handling of her report that a fellow student had raped her in her dormitory bed in August 2012; the performance embodied the argument that the burden of sexual assault is carried by victims.¹ The accused student, Paul Nungesser, has denied the allegation and insisted the encounter was consensual.²

Key fact	Detail
Artist and venue	Emma Sulkowicz, a Visual Arts major at Columbia College, Columbia University, New York³
Duration	September 2014 to May 2015, spanning the full academic year as her senior thesis¹
Object	A dorm-issue, extra-long twin mattress weighing about 50 pounds, the type of mattress Sulkowicz said the assault occurred on⁴
Rules of engagement	Carry the mattress on Columbia property, stow it safely off campus, never ask for help but accept help if offered³
Ending condition	The performance would end when the alleged assailant was expelled or left the school; he remained until graduation⁵
Movement it inspired	Carry That Weight Together, including a First National Day of Action at Columbia and other universities on October 29, 2014⁶
Aftermath	Nungesser's Title IX lawsuit against Columbia was dismissed by Judge Gregory Woods in 2016⁷
Current location	The mattress is held by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, not on display⁸

Origins

Sulkowicz, a Columbia University senior, said she was raped in her own dorm bed at the beginning of her sophomore year, in August 2012. The following year she and two other women reported the same fellow student, Paul Nungesser, to the university; all three cases were dismissed, and a Columbia inquiry found him not responsible.⁵^•¹ Nungesser, a German citizen, insisted publicly that the encounter was entirely consensual and said he had become a pariah on campus.² Sulkowicz was also one of 23 Columbia and Barnard students who filed a federal Title IX complaint in April 2013 alleging that the university mishandled sexual-assault cases.⁵

In response, the visual arts major conceived a performance artwork for her final thesis. She began it in September 2014, carrying the mattress to class, the library, and the gym, and stated she would continue for as long as she attended the same school as the man she alleged had raped her. Sulkowicz told TIME that the act of carrying the mattress from her room "out into the light" mirrored bringing her personal story into the open, and that the piece was about "carrying the memory of that everywhere I go."⁵

Rules and form

The performance operated under self-imposed rules that Sulkowicz posted in her studio at Watson Hall. She was required to carry the mattress whenever she was on Columbia University property; when leaving campus, she had to leave it in a safe place for collection on her return; and she could not ask for help carrying it, though she would accept help if it was offered. Sulkowicz termed it an "endurance performance art piece" and noted it might last a day or run until graduation in May 2015.³

Scholars have read the rules as central to the work's meaning. The prohibition on asking for help, while accepting offered help, analogized the burden that sexual-assault survivors carry with them to the literal weight of the mattress.⁵ One performance scholar notes that the mattress is heavy, awkward, and portable, an object chosen for its ungainly but solid dimensions, and that the work materializes a weight that is both literal and metaphorical. The student group Carry That Weight Together built directly on the rule about accepting offered help, galvanizing around the idea of collective carrying and tilting the verb "carry" from a specific survivor's burden toward a metaphorical call to collective action.³

The Carry That Weight movement

The performance became the blueprint for a wider movement against sexual assault on Columbia's campus and at several American universities, many acting in solidarity with or drawing direct inspiration from Sulkowicz.³ Student organizers deliberately expanded the work from a personal narrative and individual artistic project into a broad, inclusive platform for discussion of gender violence on campus and beyond.³

On October 29, 2014, Connecticut College students took part in a National Day of Action inspired by the art and activism of Sulkowicz, under the hashtag #CarryThatWeight; the campus response was positive enough that it spread on social media.⁶ Sulkowicz's visibility also reached national politics: she accompanied Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to the State of the Union address in January 2015, saying she hoped the President would use the occasion to spotlight the incentives that reward colleges for underreporting sexual assault.⁹

Reception

Critical response was divided. In the New York Times, art critic Roberta Smith called the work "succinct and powerful" and noted that one of its most effective aspects was the way it fluctuated between private and public, and between solitary and participatory.¹⁰^•¹¹ Jerry Saltz, art critic for New York magazine, named it the best art show of 2014 and described it as "pure radical vulnerability."¹⁰ Performance artist Marina Abramović also praised the work.¹²

Criticism came from outside and inside the art world. Social critic Camille Paglia attacked the piece as "a parody of the worst aspects of grievance-oriented feminism."¹² During the performance's final days, anonymous posters bearing Sulkowicz's image carrying a mattress and labeled "Pretty Little Liar" were found around Columbia's Morningside campus, and other anonymous posters near the university accused Sulkowicz of lying about her experience of sexual assault.³^•¹³ Sulkowicz herself recalled that "everyone was suddenly an expert on my rape and whether I was a real rape victim."¹²

Conclusion and aftermath

Sulkowicz carried the mattress onto the stage at her Class Day celebration for seniors on May 19, 2015, the day before university-wide Commencement, marking a full academic year of the performance, and carried it across the stage at graduation with the help of other students.³^•¹²

After the performance ended, Nungesser sued Columbia University, its president Lee Bollinger, and visual arts professor Jon Kessler, who oversaw the thesis, under Title IX for gender discrimination, arguing the university had allowed and condoned harassment of him.¹⁴^•⁷ In 2016, District Judge Gregory Woods in Manhattan ruled that Nungesser had failed to show that Columbia discriminated against him based on his gender, and the university prevailed.⁷

Legacy

The performance entered the canon of protest and feminist performance art in discussions alongside earlier works such as Ana Mendieta's Untitled (Rape Scene) (1973).¹⁵ A 2017 scholarly account notes that the work did not explicitly use #MeToo language, predating that movement, but that, like the later phrase "me too," the mattress worked to authorize survivors' stories in public spaces that had previously remained private speech.¹¹ Sulkowicz appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary The Hunting Ground, about campus sexual assault.¹²

The mattress itself entered the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History under the object type "Mattresses," with the ID number ZZ.RSN83603R00 and recorded measurements of 15.08125 cm x 182.245 cm x 73.9775 cm; it is currently not on display.⁸ Later scholarship has read the work as autobiographical practice and protest, examining how images of Sulkowicz taken by news photographers circulated online even though the artwork insisted on the physical, place-based, and local, and situating it in the pre-#MeToo era of public survivorship.¹

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026