TRACEY EMIN

Early Years

Tracey Emin was born in Croydon, outer London, in 1963 but raised in the seaside town of Margate, Kent. Her father was not always present—he had another family—and following the collapse of his hotel business, Emin, her mother and brother were thrown into poverty. She started a course in fashion at Medway College, but has said: “I dropped out after a year-and-a-half because I was rubbish at it.” She then began to paint and make art, studying printmaking, followed by a fine art degree at Maidstone College and then the Royal College of Art, where she studied painting, graduating in 1989. However, traumatised by personal experiences including abortions, she destroyed a lot of her student work.

Tracey Emin: Artworks

Inspired by the experiences of her own life, Tracey Emin’s works frequently feature self-portraiture or references to memory and trauma. Using techniques from painting to appliqué, she creates works that combine her own lived reality with the creative disciplines of art.

Her first solo show, My Major Retrospective in 1993, included photographs of her destroyed art-school work. She followed this with a moving film, How it Feels (1996), detailing her experience of abortion.

Neon plays a key role in Emin’s works: statements in sloping writing encapsulate feelings and thoughts, including 2019’s I Longed for You and I don’t Believe in Love But I Believe in You (2012). The use of neon could be said to echo the seaside lights of her home town, Margate. Margate itself often appears in her works—for example, 2005’s It’s Not the Way I want to Die is a large-scale sculptural installation referencing the Grade II* listed (yet non-operational) Scenic Railway wooden rollercoaster at the town’s Dreamland theme Park.

Embroidery is also an important part of Emin’s practice: she transposes a traditionally “women’s” skill on to quilts and sewn collages of different materials that tell a personal, feminist story. One example is Mad Tracey from Margate. Everyone’s Been There (1997), in which she sewed her own life story, from diary entries to significant memories.

Tracey Emin: Select Awards

• Damehood for services to the arts (2024)
• Honorary doctorate, New York Academy of Art (2022)
• CBE for services to the visual arts (2012)
• Honorary doctorate, Royal College of Art (2007)
• Doctor of Letters, University of Kent (2007)
• The Jury Prize, Cairo Biennale (2001)

Tracey Emin: Select Public Commissions

• I want my time with you (2018) is a 20-metre sign hanging in St Pancras International station, London, originally installed for the St Pancras Wires project but still in place to this day. Although considered part of Emin’s “neons”, the work is actually LED.
• The Distance of Your Heart (2018) is a collection of more than 60 handmade bronze bird sculptures, installed in the streets of Sydney’s northern end, with the words “The Distance of Your Heart” inscribed on a stone bird bath in Macquarie Place Park.
• The Mother (2022), at Inger Munch’s pier in Oslo, is a nine-metre bronze sculpture of a kneeling figure, cradling something we cannot see.
• When the National Portrait Gallery in London reopened in 2023, Tracey Emin was commissioned to the design the bronze entrance doors to the north entrance. The Doors (2023) features 45 portraits of women, acting as a counterpoint to the male figures on the gallery’s façade. At the time, Emin said: “ I felt like the doors of the National Portrait Gallery should represent every woman, every age and every culture throughout time.”

Tracey Emin: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• A Second Life, Tate Modern, London (2026)
• I Loved You Until The Morning, Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven (2025)
• Sex and Solitude, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2025)
• I Followed you to the end, White Cube, London (2024)
• By the time you see me there will be nothing left, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2024)
• It’s different When You are in Love, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2023)
• Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, Faurschou Foundation, New York City (2023)
• I Lay Here For You, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh (2022)
• A Journey from Death, Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate (2022)
• Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch, The Loneliness of the Soul, Munchmuseet, Oslo (2021)
• Living Under the Hunter’s Moon, White Cube, London (2020)
• An Insane Desire For You, Art Projects Ibiza (2019)
• The Fear of Loving. Orsay through the eyes of Tracey Emin, Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2019)
• My Bed, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2017)
• Tracey Emin and William Blake in Focus, Tate Liverpool (2016)
• The more of you the more I love you, Art Basel Unlimited (2016)
• BP Spotlight: Tracey Emin and Francis Bacon, Tate Britain, London (2015)
• The Last Great Adventure is You, White Cube, London (2014)
• I followed you to the sun, Lehmann Maupin, New York City (2013)
• She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2012)
• Love is What You Want, Hayward Gallery, London (2011)
• Walking With Tears, Royal Academy of Art, London (2010)
• Tracey Emin: Those Who Suffer Love, White Cube, London (2009)
• Tracey Emin 20 Years, Kunstmuseum Bern (2009)
• When I Think About Sex..., White Cube, London (2005)
• Death Mask, National Portrait Gallery, London (2005)
• Can’t See Past My Own Eyes, Sketch, London (2004)
• Tracey Emin Every Part of Me’s Bleeding, Lehmann Maupin, New York City (1999)
• Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, Galleri Andreas Brändström, Stockholm (1996)
• My Major Retrospective, Jay Jopling/White Cube, London (1993)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Crossing Into Darkness, Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate (2026)
• Good Mom/Bad Mom, Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2025)
• If not now, when?, Collection Max Vorst, Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (2024)
• The Embodied Spirit, White Cube Seoul (2023)
• Souffler de son Souffle, Fondation Van Gogh Arles, Arles (2021)
• Animals & Us, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2018)
• Histories of Sexuality, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2017)
• Punk. Its Traces in Contemporary Art, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2016)
• Sleepless, The Bed in Art History and Contemporary Art, Belvedere, Vienna (2015)
• Frayed: Textiles on the Edge, Time and Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth (2013)
• A Perfect Place to Grow: 175 years of the RCA, Royal College of Art, London (2012)
• Newspeak, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2011)
• Naked, Jensen Art Gallery, Auckland (2010)
• Pop Life, Tate Modern, London (2009)
• Summer Exhibition (curator), Royal Academy of Arts, London (2008)
• Lights, Camera Action: Artists’ Films for the Cinema, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (2007)
• Aftershock: Contemporary British Art 1990–2006, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2006)
• London Calling. Y[oung] B[ritish] A[rtists] Criss-Crossed, Galleri Kaare Berntsen, Oslo (2005)
• Secrets of the 1990s, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem (2004)
• Happiness: A Survival Guide for Art and Life, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2003)
• Stories—Narrative Structures in Contemporary Art, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2002)
• Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2001) * Art Lovers, Liverpool Biennial (1999)
• Turner Prize, Tate Gallery, London (1999)

Further Reading

• Tracey Emin’s Instagram
• Artist page at White Cube
• The Tracey Emin Foundation
• 2026 interview from the Guardian

Tracey Emin FAQs

| 2026