LONDON – There is an unsettling feeling of reading someone’s personal diary as you enter Tracey Emin’s retrospective A second life at Tate Modern, because that is her entire oeuvre. The Young British Artists movement (YBAs) – of which she and Damien Hirst were perhaps the loudest figures in the 1990s – was once described as a mere footnote in art history, but today that is no longer the case; Emin is now a Dame and was professor of drawing at the Royal Academy from 2011 to 2013. Nevertheless, her work has no art historical anchor: there is no socio-political commentary, no observations on British life or femininity, nor any subject matter beyond the immediate environment – or literal body – of Tracey Emin herself.
Furthermore, there is little context, history or curatorial commentary to accompany the works on display, although they are loosely arranged chronologically. There is a single introductory panel outside the show’s entrance – hidden from view by the ticket check desk – outlining her themes of ‘love, longing, loss and grief’, but no further biographical detail other than accolades following her 1999 Turner Prize nomination.
In short, the art speaks for itself. Except it isn’t. It is the written words that speak: the words that cover her blankets and chairs and the countless pages of deepest thoughts, like her “Tracey Emin CV” (1995). And of course there are the titles of the works that provide the only form of context for many.
The words that appear most often are ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘me’, showing us Emin’s consistent focus on the intimate experiences of her own body and mind – for the identity of the ‘you’ remains unimportant, and perhaps deliberately so, because who she is addressing is never made explicit. The less said about the paintings the better, for they are not so much attempts at representation in the sense of art as we usually know it, but rather desperate stabs and streaks of blood red, white, dripping navy blue and black. There is a reconstruction of her rubble-filled chaos of a studio entitled ‘Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made’ (1996), and her paintings indeed seem to be literal exorcisms of her own experiences. The title of one painting, ‘Rape’ (2018), gives the subject its entire context and therefore its meaning, and hence its raw, emotional power. Without the words, Emin’s images, for all their visual rawness and fear, are unclear and redundant.
This is art as therapy. It should be exempt from the usual forms of criticism: how technically proficient it is, what we can learn from it, or what Emin says to her audience, because it is conceived entirely as a means of self-examination, and, in the case of traumatic events such as abortions and sexual violence, a means of reclaiming her own body. This is something that many survivors will identify with strongly, and a caption at the exit details helplines for people seeking help for cancer, mental health and sexual abuse.
However, should we as an audience watch this woman’s intimate personal pain? If the art were to be framed or curatorially contextualized as speaking for women or victims of abuse, and the horrors that women and their bodies go through, then indeed we should; we can empathize with it in solidarity and learn from it. Only that is not the case: Emin wants us to see absolutely everything, unashamedly, as her art. What emerges is a kind of cult of the self, which is perhaps why Emin of all YBAs resonates most with contemporary audiences. In the age of Instagram, social media encourages the unhealthy need to publicly validate and curate yourself and your bodily experiences, as if such things only exist if they are broadcast and liked by followers. Take a series of Polaroids detailing Emin’s body after ostomy surgery from 2020 to 2025; every inch of the bloodied self is captured separately and in detail, from genitals to stoma to face. The fact that images from this series (only the non-intimate images) are available for purchase in the gift shop speaks to the way we are increasingly worshiping at the altar of our navels.
We arrive at a reconstruction of Emin’s unmade bed, which was sensationally nominated for the Turner Prize. The controversy cannot be overstated: it’s something that an art student who spent all night partying instead of making work would submit for his thesis show, and yet it received the ultimate recognition, doubly cemented by its purchase by advertising executive Charles Saatchi. This legitimized the idea that you don’t have to be able to draw to become a successful artist (see also the sub-Rodin style mini bronzes, or the sub-Yves Klein blue body print paintings in the show), but must have an unwavering and bulldozing focus on yourself. Far from being a footnote in contemporary British art, Emin has spearheaded the trend of extreme self-introspection coupled with ruthless self-promotion. The queue to enter this packed show shows what a success this combination has become in today’s world.
Tracey Emin: a second life continues until August 31 at Tate Modern (Bankside, London, England). The exhibition was curated by Maria Balshaw, Alvin Li and Jess Baxter.
