Tate Announces Tracey Emin and Ana Mendieta Among Artists to Get Major Billing

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Tate Modern has dedicated its 2026 programme to three trailblazing women artists, the London institution announced today. Highlights include exhibitions featuring British artist Tracey Emin, painter and cultural icon Frida Kahlo, and performance artist Ana Mendieta.

Forty years of Emin’s practice will be on view from 26 February to 31 August, celebrating the Young British Artist’s ‘raw and confessional’ approach to art-making through career-defining works and never-exhibited materials, including paintings, sculptures, videos, textiles, and neons.

Emin came to international attention in the 1990s, with her Turner Prize nominated My Bed (1998)—a dishevelled bed next to detritus and empty liquor bottles, referencing a depressive phrase in her life, and included at Tate. The installation was auctioned for 2,546,500 GBP (4.4 million USD) at Christie’s in July 2014. ‘Art should never feel like a treadmill; it should be an expression of the soul,’ Emin told Ocula in 2016.

From 25 June to 4 January 2027, an exhibition diving into the life and legacy of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo will feature over 130 works, including paintings, photographs, and memorabilia from the artist’s archives, alongside works by 80 of her peers and generations she inspired. The Making of an Icon will showcase the artist’s identity as a wife, activist, intellectual, and modernist, offering insight into the ‘transformative role’ women artists played in the 20th century.

Cuban-American performance artist Ana Mendieta’s major exhibition will follow from 9 July to 10 January 2027, bringing many of the environmental art pioneer’s works to the U.K. for the first time. Early paintings, late sculptures, and recently remastered films by the artist will attest to her ‘trailblazing practice’, with Tate calling Mendieta ‘one of the most important artists of the 20th century’.

At Tate Britain, Hurvin Anderson‘s exhibition will feature over 60 of the painter’s works from 26 March to 23 August, including atmospheric landscapes and interiors from the Caribbean and the U.K.

From 1 October to 14 February 2027, an exhibition dedicated to the 1990s will feature work by artists like Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing, and Yinka Shonibare, alongside photographs and fashion collections.

Tate St Ives will host exhibitions by British painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (24 October 2026–11 April 2027) and Bloomsbury Group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, which includes a recreation of their Charleston studio (12 November 2026–11 April 2027). —[O]

Main image: Left to right: Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) (detail). Nickolas Muray Collection of Mexican Art, 66.6. Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; Ana Mendieta, Imágen de Yágul, Mexico (1973) (detail). © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Licensed by DACS.