Tracey Emin British, b. 1963

Emin’s practice is built on unguarded disclosure, translating the raw material of memory, desire, shame and survival directly into form. Working across drawing, painting, printmaking, textile, neon, sculpture, video and writing, she treats her own biography as the subject and substance of the work itself, refusing the distance that convention usually places between artist and image. Her line is unmistakably her own: immediate, exposed and unresolved, with an expressive intensity often associated with artists such as Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele. Handwritten language frequently enters the work as an extension of the image rather than a caption, giving her neons, monoprints and works on paper the quality of private thoughts made public. Across each medium, the same impulse persists: the transformation of lived experience into a direct and emotionally charged visual language.

Tracey Emin (b. 1963, UK) rose to prominence in the late 1980s and 1990s and became closely associated with the generation known as the Young British Artists. She represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and was elected a Royal Academician the same year. Her work is held in major public and private collections internationally, and she has continued to exhibit extensively across Europe, the United States and beyond. In 2026, Tate Modern presented Tracey Emin: A Second Life, her largest retrospective to date, bringing together four decades of work and placing her sustained commitment to painting alongside the installations, textiles, neons, films and works on paper that established her international reputation.