Exhibition
Tracey Emin: “A second life”
Tate Modern, London. Shown until August 31st
The fact that Tracey Emin recently opened an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London has not been lost on anyone who follows the English press. The once scandalized but now deeply loved Dame Tracey – ennobled and then exploited in the media for decades – offers the most sensational readers everything they could dream of.
Embedded in this retrospective are stories of abuse and rape, fear of death and self-hatred, shame and sexual preferences, abortions and childhood trauma. The artist quotes quotes like these: “Here I am – a fucking broken, crazy, anorexic, alcoholic, childless, beautiful woman. I never thought it would end like this.”
Tracey Emin disappoints neither visitors nor the English reviewers. Viewer records are expected.
The exhibition at Tate is called “A Second Life”. Is she already in her second life?
Yes, no one could miss the fact that Emin was resurrected after a quick visit to the realm of the dead. When she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of bladder cancer in 2020, an unprecedented media frenzy followed. Her operations and difficult recovery resulted in interviews from her hospital bed, always richly illustrated.
As details about her diseased body filled the newspaper pages – such as the surgical removal of parts of her genitals – there was a sense that a new frontier had been crossed. That the public is now intruding into an area that most of us never wanted to enter.
Although the self-disclosure was their trademark three decades ago. Then Emin created one of his most crucial works at Galleri Andreas Brändström in Stockholm: “Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made.”
She moved into her installation and became part of it.
For three weeks we let curious visitors follow their lives inside. Through small peepholes we could see her working, eating, sleeping and walking around naked. She filled the room with everyday things and with drawings, texts and expansive images that dealt with the grief of two abortions and failed relationships.
She couldn’t take it anymore managed to paint, but still created images and texts that dealt with exactly this impossibility.
In fact, a new kind of painting was born there behind the gallery wall. It’s clear now. The entire installation was reconstructed at Tate Modern and is presented as a turning point. Like a previous visit to the underworld.
In the 1990s, the British art scene changed fundamentally with the emergence of the Young British Artists (YBA) – a loosely knit group of artists who combined conceptual approaches with media provocation and an unusually strong connection to the art market. They were all trained at art schools in London in the late 1980s, in the middle of the Thatcher era.
The “Freeze” exhibition in 1988A starting point was the event organized by Damien Hirst during his studies. Some of the artists who later became central to YBA were introduced here, including the sculptor Sarah Lucas and the painter Gary Hume.
It wasn’t just the works that attracted attention, but also the fact that the artists themselves took control of production and marketing. They used materials rarely seen before in beautiful spaces: dead animals in formalin, live flies, rotting flesh, garbage and pornographic material. The aesthetic culminated in works such as Hirst’s Shark in Formalin and Emin’s self-revealing installations.
A crucial factor in the YBA’s impact was the support of new collectors. The focus was on advertising mogul Charles Saatchi, whose exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery in London gave the artists enormous visibility. The new art became part of popular culture and collecting became a form of speculative investment.
The artists were criticized because they are cynical, sensationalist and too dependent on the market. But the movement undoubtedly transformed British cultural life. Hirst and Emin blurred the line between artist and brand, between private confession and public performance.
Today, YBA is easily understood as a contemporary expression of an England characterized by neoliberal economics, mediaization, new Britpop hits and a self-assurance captured in the concept of Cool Britannia. When the Tate Modern opened in 2000, it was an official confirmation of the new status of contemporary art. At the same time, the Frieze art fair grew and strengthened London’s role as a global art metropolis.
Emin’s big retrospective now serves as a reminder of this entire story. Finally, you can get nostalgic. Today, after Brexit, art life in London is significantly less expansive.
For Emin, the media frenzy began with “Everyone I have ever slept with 1963-1995,” a tent inside which displayed a list of the names of everyone she had slept with. But also to family members and close friends with whom she only slept. Her two aborted fetuses were also featured in the marquee, which was later destroyed in a high-profile fire at Saatchi’s warehouse.
The real breakthrough came in 1998 with “My Bed,” an unmade bed surrounded by bottles, condoms, blood stains and personal items. The scene functions as a kind of self-portrait without the artist’s body having to be depicted. Nothing is embellished here. Traces of body and life, sex and drunkenness, desire and everyday chaos become artistic material.
It will be kept at Tate Modern The iconic bed became one of the world’s most recent pivotal works of art and was created in England. That’s how it is.
On the other hand, her large and elaborately crafted bronze sculptures are rather unsuccessful attempts to continue the tradition that preceded Louise Bourgeois. They usually feel heavy.
Emin also works with neon writing: fateful sentences written by hand are transformed into red light. The words express longing, loss, regret and threat. They are dark confessions and at the same time sculptural objects that give sexuality and despair a physical form.
A strange contrast emerges between the commercial connotations of the medium and the intimacy of the message.
But it’s hers Large-format paintings and self-portraits that are the most surprising in the exhibition. Fragmented, naked bodies, depicted with quick lines and a limited color gamut: black, red, white.
Sometimes parts of the canvas are filled with writing: a kind of diary entries or love letters. In “The End of Love”, 2024, we are in bed again. Now it’s filled with blood. A black cat looks at the spilled area.
The experiences of body and death depicted on these canvases are so private in nature that they should not be shared with others. But the best images convey a physical presence that can only be resisted and difficult to capture in clichés of presence and authenticity.
I didn’t expect it The. The late paintings have a nervousness and physical intensity comparable to those of Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch. Apparently she studied them. And have managed to transform their frenzy in a way that points to a new chapter.
Much of this exhibition looks back. But at the same time it shows what no one knew about Tracey Emin.
Your second life has just begun.
Facts.The life and work of Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin is born Born July 3, 1963 in Croydon, South London, to an English mother of Roma descent and a Turkish Cypriot father. She grew up in Margate, Kent, with her twin brother Paul.
Your artistic The training began in 1980-82 with a fashion degree at Medway College of Design. At this time she met her first partner, the punk and multi-artist Billy Childish, became part of the group The Medway Poets and learned graphic techniques from 1983 to 1986. After separating from Childish, she studied art at the Royal College of Art from 1987 to 1989.
She was later Part of the Young British Artists group, shared a studio and opened a shop with Sarah Lucas. In 1997 she took part in the successful exhibition “Sensation” at the Royal Academy with Charles Saatchi’s collection. The tent installation “Everyone I have ever slept with 1963–1995” caused a stir there, followed in 1998 by “My bed”. The following year she was nominated for the Turner Prize.
Emin had one numerous exhibitions, was appointed Professor of Drawing in 2011, was knighted and knighted, and since 2024 she has held the title of Dame Tracey Emin.
On the Instagram account Tracey Emin Studio, with 323,000 followers, introduces herself like this: “I live without a bladder with my cats Teacup and Pancake.”
She is also known for her charity work and has returned to Margate to fund TKE Studios studios for young artists.
Read more texts by Daniel Birnbaum and more on the subject of art
