Tracey Emin: A Second Life

Tate Modern presents the largest ever survey exhibition celebrating the groundbreaking work of world-renowned artist Dame Tracey Emin (b.1963). Emin’s commitment to unapologetic self-expression has transformed our understanding of what art can be and continues to influence contemporary art today, using the female body to explore passion, pain and healing.

Tracey Emin, I never Asked to Fall in Love - You made me Feel like This 2018 © Tracey Emin

Spanning her extraordinary 40-year practice - from seminal installations made in the 1990s, to recent paintings and bronzes going on display for the first time - A Second Life marks the most significant exhibition of Emin’s career, tracing the key life events that have shaped her journey and transformation. Conceived in close collaboration with the artist, it brings together over 100 works encompassing painting, video, textile, neon, sculpture and installation, demonstrating her raw approach to sharing experiences of love, trauma and personal growth.

Charting Emin’s lifelong commitment to painting, the show begins by presenting works from her first solo exhibition at White Cube, My Major Retrospective 1982-93, comprising a series of tiny photographs of her art school paintings from the 1980s which she destroyed following a difficult period of her life. These are shown alongside Tracey Emin CV 1995, a self-portrait and first-person narration of her life up until that moment and the poignant video work Why I Never Became A Dancer 1995, in which the artist recounts traumatic events from her teenage years in Margate. Together, these early works introduce visitors to Emin’s instantly recognisable first-person voice and intimate storytelling.

Emin's deep-rooted connection to her hometown of Margate has been a constant thread throughout her practice. Leaving Margate aged 15, Emin returned intermittently during her late teens and early 20s before moving to London in 1987 to study at the Royal College of Art. After witnessing her mother’s passing in Margate in 2016 and surviving cancer in 2020, Emin returned to the seaside town, making it her permanent home and establishing the Tracey Emin Artist Residency, a free studio-based art school. Tate Modern is showcasing works from Emin’s life centred around Margate and memories of her childhood, exploring how she revisits and retells her personal history. Emphasising the turbulent years she spent there, Mad Tracey From Margate: Everybody’s Been There 1997 lays bare her most intimate thoughts through handstitched phrases, letters and drawings, while the wooden rollercoaster It's Not the Way I Want to Die 2005 takes inspiration from the town’s famous amusement park Dreamland to reflect on her anxieties and vulnerabilities.

Emin frequently confronts personal trauma and pain, dispelling the stigma surrounding issues that are often left undiscussed. The exhibition addresses the artist’s experience of sexual assault, including the neon I could have Loved my Innocence 2007 and the embroidered calico Is This a Joke 2009. In one of her most personal video works, How It Feels 1996, Emin gives a challenging yet empowering account of an abortion that went wrong, describing institutional neglect, the physical and psychological implications of refusing motherhood, and the misogyny associated with it. Shown publicly for the first time, the quilt The Last of the Gold 2002 is emblazoned with an ‘A to Z of abortion’, providing advice for women facing a similar situation. 

At the heart of the show sit two seminal installations: Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made 1996 and My Bed 1998. The first documents a period of three weeks where Emin locked herself in a Stockholm gallery attempting to reconcile her relationship with painting, which she had abandoned six years prior after her experience of abortion. This is followed by Emin’s iconic Turner-Prize nominated installation, documenting her recovery from an alcohol-fuelled breakdown. These extraordinary works move the visitor from Emin's first life to her second life, post illness and surgery.  

Tracey Emin, I followed you to the end 2024. Yale Centre for British Art. © Tracey Emin.

Emin's experience of cancer, surgery and disability are directly addressed in the exhibition, emphasising her disregard for any separation of the personal and public. The recent bronze sculpture Ascension 2024, exploring Emin’s new relationship with her body following major surgery for bladder cancer, is joined by new photographs showing the stoma that she now lives with.

The exhibition culminates with the artist exploring the dimensions of her second life in painting. While pain and heartbreak are still present, Emin’s ambitious large-scale paintings offer a transcendent, spiritual quality, showing a resolute determination to live in the present. Never without a darker side, the sculpture Death Mask 2002 sits amongst these expansive paintings illustrating a life lived to the full. Moving beyond the gallery walls, the monumental bronze I Followed You Until The End 2023 commands the landscape outside Tate Modern, inviting passersby to experience Emin’s groundbreaking, visceral work.

Dame Tracey Emin said “I’m very excited about having a show at Tate Modern. For me, it’s one of the greatest international contemporary art museums in the world and it’s here in London. I feel this show, titled ‘A second Life’, will be a bench mark for me. A moment in my life when I look back and go forward. A true celebration of living”