White Cube Arrives in New York with Tracey Emin

White Cube cuts the ribbon on its Madison Avenue gallery with Tracey Emin‘s highly-awaited solo exhibition, LOVERS GRAVE (4 November 2023–13 January 2024).

‘The American art world is finally welcoming diversity. There is even room for women like me,’ Emin penned in The Evening Standard this month.

‘I’ve been more honest and more brave and open with myself than ever before,’ she said, describing new works in the show as ‘giant paintings covered in an emotional tsunami of love, desire, lust and despair.’

‘This show is me as I am now, how I feel now. Who I am now. This show is my mirror,’ she said.

For her first show in New York in seven years, Emin has created paintings that draw from images of archaeological burial sites where human remains are locked in an eternal loving embrace.

Emin’s success as an artist lies in her ability to paint from the heart—‘I have never painted pictures, only emotions,’ she has said. And this show, falling on her 60th year, by no means skirts the themes of love, desire, loss and grief that have driven her unashamedly emotional practice over the years.

Expect to see both paintings and works on paper. An outline of Margate, the U.K. seaside town where she lives and set up the Tracey Emin Artist Residency (TEAR) in 2022, can be spotted in I went home (2023), while moments of tumultuous love making are made manifest in There was no Right way (2022).

Following this show, White Cube’s New York space will welcome Theaster Gates (31 January) and then Antony Gormley.

Main image: Tracey Emin, There was no Right way (2022). Acrylic on canvas. 205.5 x 279.5 cm. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2023. Photo © Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.