Art

Tracey Emin's 'second life' at the Tate Modern

The exhibition, open until 31 August and curated by Tate director Maria Balshaw, is in fact a retrospective of the artist's poetics over the last 40 years

by Nicol Degli Innocenti

11 May 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

The largest exhibition ever devoted to Tracey Emin is also the most intensely personal, visceral and intimate, a wide-open window into the life and soul of a woman who more than any other has sublimated trauma, passion and pain by transforming them into art. Tate Modern brings together over one hundred works that mark each stage of her artistic journey and show her wide range: from paintings to bronzes, from neon to embroideries and quilts, from drawings to writings, from videos and photographs to installations.

“Alla Tate le due vite di Tracey Emin”
Photogallery12 foto

The exhibition, curated and strongly desired by Tate director Maria Balshaw, is in fact a retrospective of Emin's artistic career over the last 40 years, even though the artist has stated that "retrospectives are for the dead". This is why Emin wanted that, even though the exhibition follows a chronological path, in each room there should be one of her recent paintings, thus linking past and present and reminding us that she, despite recovering from a very serious illness, continues to paint.

'A second life'

Also in celebration of overcoming the bladder cancer that had brought her close to death in 2020, Emin titled the exhibition 'A Second Life'. The artist explained that it is meant to be "a moment when I look back but can also move forward, a celebration of a second life, which is a possibility denied to many."

The starting point is a collage of tiny Polaroids of early drawings and paintings from the 1980s, photographed and then destroyed in a moment of crisis, and letters and drawings recounting the racist insults aimed at Emin - the daughter of a Turkish Cypriot - during her adolescence in Margate, a small town on the English Channel. And then an uncompromising and unpretentious dive into her lived experience: the sexual violence she suffered as a young girl, and recounted in a video in which she dances, and in patchwork quilts, a traditional art form that Emin wanted to rediscover and reinvent, while a neon sign declares "I could have loved my innocence". And then a long video, drawings, paintings and installations to recall a traumatic abortion aggravated by the heedless cruelty of doctors and nurses.

At the centre of the exhibition are two installations that have been milestones in Emin's artistic journey: "Exorcism of the last painting I ever made", from 1996, which describes a three-week period during which she locked herself in a gallery - recreated at the Tate - to return to painting, ending six years of painful self-imposed 'exile' from paintbrushes after the abortion experience. And then the famous 'My bed' of 1998, the controversial work that catapulted her to fame, her unmade bed surrounded by objects that tell of her recovery after a nervous breakdown.

From here we move on to the 'second life': with characteristic, brutal honesty, Emin documents her devastating operation and slow recovery in a series of photos, but above all she proclaims loud and clear the new phase of her artistic journey, with monumental bronze statues and vast oil-painted canvases. The disease did not win, life won.

The key message of the exhibition is that life is there and continues, before and after rape, before and after abortion, before and after cancer. The last room is a carousel of highlights of her life, recent paintings painted with such energy and intensity that at times they tear the canvas apart. In the centre is her bronze death mask, a memento mori, but the atmosphere is joyful, an affirmation of life and vitality and of the art and creativity that together can transcend trauma and pain.

Tracey Emin: A Second Life. Until 31 August 2026, Tate Modern, London