TRACEY EMIN

Over a career spanning some two decades, Tracey Emin has produced a body of work that encompasses all forms of artistic expression, including painting, print-making, drawing, film, photography, installations, appliqué, sculpture and neon text. Although Emin first rose to prominence as part of the so-called generation of Young British Artists (YBA), the highly autobiographical nature of her work set it apart from the general artistic trends of the 1980s and 1990s. Emin is well known for her frank, confessional style and for transforming her inner emotional and psychological world – personal experiences, memories and feelings – into art that is both intimate yet profoundly universal. Her candid but unsentimental disclosure of personal trauma and crises, as well as aspects of her love life, have often led to controversy. Works such as Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (destroyed in the Momart fire, 2004) and her 1999 Turner Prize exhibit entitled My Bed (currently on loan to Tate Modern) are two cases in point. Tracey Emin was elected to the Royal Academy in 2007, the same year that she represented Great Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Emin was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy in 2011 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2013.