Why Tracey Emin’s art is more about us than her
Tate Modern’s retrospective of the grande dame of British art questions how well we know the artist and ourselves.
Portrait of Tracey Emin Tate Modern 2026. Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania)
Tracey Emin bares all, again. The artist’s eagerly awaited show at Tate Modern brings together works from across four decades, squeezing it all in: the videos of the 1990s, the embroidered blankets of the 2000s, the neon works of the 2010s and sculpture and paintings of the 2020s.
Her famous bed is here, too. As the curators note, for some people this will be the first time they see this (at one point controversial) work in real life, not on a phone screen. On the other hand, the artist’s large bronze figure and a photographic series documenting the stoma she now lives with are new for all visitors.
Tracey Emin, Why I Never Became a Dancer 1995 © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2026
This is the most significant show of Emin’s life, covering her whole career. Almost right from the start it drops you in the middle of the action. In her autobiographical video work Why I Never Became a Dancer, 1995 the artist is talking about being sex shamed and taunted at the age of 15 in Margate. Just like the rest of the show, it shocks you at first, then offers a hopeful, powerful ending.
In the years since My Bed was nominated for Turner Prize in 1999 the press and public have become desensitised to shock in art. Now the bed is a piece of history, even if a major one. As Jess Baxter, the Assistant Curator says: “It changed the trajectory of art.” But have we ever understood what the bed was saying all along?
Tracey Emin A Second Life at Tate Modern installation view. Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania)
We thought, or were told, that it was all about Tracey Emin. Her navel gazing at its peak. Standing there in front of it, all I could think of was how I would tidy it up: put the vodka bottles, cigarette boxes and newspaper in the recycling, the tissues in the regular bin, wash the underwear, change the sheets. I wasn’t thinking of Tracey at all. I was entirely in my own head, in my own life, however boring the tasks that came to mind. Have I seen beds like that? Have I tidied beds like that? Have you?
That is exactly what Emin is all about. Her motto has long been that there is no distinction or division between public and private. Her abortion piece was next in line. I went through one, just as around one in three women in the UK will in their lifetime. Tracey Emin’s experience was horrific, but thankfully most women in this country have access to a safe procedure. This is not the case for many women across the world, including in the US. Is having an abortion private, when everyone else, but the person having it, seems to have a say?
Tracey Emin A Second Life at Tate Modern installation view, The Last of the Gold (2002). Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania)
The exhibition’s title ‘A Second Life’ suggests what lies at its core. While arranged vaguely chronologically, it includes the artist’s recent works in most rooms. Her life post cancer, post surgery, with the stoma, with a disability – is the second life, the one that she says not everyone is granted. With no time to waste, she uses painting as her main medium now.
She began her career with painting, back in the 1980s as an art student. She then destroyed those works, but now we can see them displayed as miniature photographs in an installation in the first room of the show. The exhibition brings together many facets of Emin – the artist, as it turns out, we only assume we know.
Tracey Emin A Second Life at Tate Modern installation view. Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania)
In the same 1999 Turner Prize show that brought us My Bed, Emin had works that dealt with her Turkish Cypriot heritage, her mixed-race identity and racism she faced. But the press and the public at the time seemed to overlook all these, in favour of the more attention-grabbing bed with its sexual connotations and suggestions of ‘dysfunctional femininity’. Race and cultural heritage were not then the hot topics that they are now.
The bed is placed at the midpoint of this show, dividing the before and after of Emin’s life. While this is not chronologically correct, it makes sense curatorially. All curators of Tate Modern’s show could not help but mention this work, as it is undeniably central to Emin’s career and remains her most recognisable work. As art masterpieces usually do, the bed seems to stay relevant across decades as its meaning adapts to changing circumstances.
Tracey Emin, The End of Love 2024. Tate © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2026
At this time in the artist’s life, the bed has become a symbol and symptom of illness. But as we leave the room where the bed, with all the detritus of her first life, is displayed, we seem to enter Emin’s mind right now. Large scale canvases with dramatic brushstrokes in greys and reds show a person in pain but fighting.
At the press preview, Tracey Emin Studio’s Creative Director Harry Weller spoke of her working methods – including words such as dervish, smashing and screaming. He also pointed out that her moments of sincere energy were interspersed with more meditative interludes, that resulted in the intricate patterns we see on some of the paintings. The show was conceived in close collaboration with the artist, so we have the privilege of seeing Emin’s work almost through Emin’s eyes.
It is not an easy exhibition to swallow, as is expected of Emin; she is not making things palatable. Even her colourful blankets, on closer inspection, are reminders of grief and violence. But her relentless will for life, for art, leaves a delicate aftertaste days after experiencing this monumental show.