TRACEY EMIN

Early life and career

Born in Croydon and raised in the seaside town of Margate, Emin studied fashion at Medway College of Design before turning to fine art, eventually earning an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 1989. Early personal experiences, including two traumatic abortions, led her to destroy much of her student work, an episode she has described as a form of “emotional suicide” that shaped her later output. In the early 1990s she began to develop a raw, diaristic voice through writing, monoprints, and installations, often shown with fellow YBAs at spaces associated with Charles Saatchi and in artist-run contexts.

Her breakthrough to wider public attention came in the mid-to-late 1990s, through a combination of television appearances, provocative interviews, and highly personal artworks that blurred the line between art and confession. Emin has since become an influential establishment figure: she was elected a Royal Academician in 2007, appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy in 2011, and made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).

Seminal works: My Bed and the Tent

Two works have come to define Emin’s public image. Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995), a small tent appliquéd inside with the names of people she had ‘slept with’—in the literal sense of sharing a bed, not only sexual partners—became emblematic of her confessional approach and of 1990s British art more broadly. Owned by Saatchi, the tent achieved iconic status before being destroyed in the 2004 Momart warehouse fire, after which Emin refused to recreate it, further cementing its mythic status.

My Bed (1998), exhibited at Tate in 1999 when Emin was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, consists of her own unmade bed surrounded by detritus from a period of depression—empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts, used condoms, worn underwear, and other personal items. The work polarised critics and the public, becoming a lightning rod in debates about the boundaries of art, authenticity, and shock value. It has since been re-exhibited and acquired by a private collector, and remains one of the most discussed installations of contemporary British art.

Alongside these headline-grabbing pieces, Emin has produced an extensive body of drawings, prints, embroidered textiles, and neon works bearing handwritten phrases that articulate longing, regret, desire, and self-doubt. Works such as Hotel International (1993), I’ve Got It All (2000), and numerous text-based neons demonstrate how she translates intimate experiences into direct, sometimes caustic language and imagery.

Themes, media and recent work

Emin’s art consistently mines her own biography, using confession as a way to speak about more universal themes of sexuality, love, grief, and survival. Her drawings often feature vulnerable, contorted female figures rendered in quick, expressive lines, while her paintings and sculptures extend this bodily focus into more monumental, sometimes almost abstract forms. Across media, she addresses subjects such as rape, abortion, heartbreak, alcoholism, and ageing with a blend of candour and theatricality that challenges distinctions between private and public life.

In recent years, particularly after her diagnosis and treatment for aggressive bladder cancer in 2020, Emin’s work has turned even more directly to questions of mortality, faith, and the body’s fragility. Exhibitions like I Followed You to the End at White Cube Bermondsey present visceral paintings and videos that grapple with illness, recovery, and the desire to keep working. New bronzes such as Ascension (2024) and large-scale paintings planned for Tate Modern‘s 2026 survey demonstrate how she has translated her long-standing preoccupations into a post-illness practice marked by both darkness and a renewed will to live.

Exhibitions, recognition and institutions

Emin has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. Major institutional shows have taken place at venues including Tate Britain, Turner Contemporary in Margate, the Hayward Gallery, and museums in Europe and the United States. She represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions surveying contemporary British art and feminist practice.

In 2026 Tate Modern will present Tracey Emin: A Second Life, the largest exhibition of her work to date, spanning more than 40 years and featuring over 90 pieces across painting, sculpture, video, textiles, neon, and installation. The show will foreground key works such as Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996) and My Bed, along with new paintings and outdoor sculpture, and will be accompanied by a documentary on her recent experiences of illness and recovery. Emin’s work is held in significant public and private collections, and she has established studios and an artist residency programme in Margate, supporting emerging artists in the town where she grew up.

Tracey Emin FAQs

Ocula | 2026