The monumental bronze I Followed You to the End<\/a> (2024), displayed on the approach to the Tate, is a foretaste of the anguished bodies in the statues within. These and the agonised black lines, floods of blood-red and bleak white backgrounds of paintings like Rape<\/a> (2018) graphically engage with such traumatic experiences.<\/p>\n Emin made her name in the 1990s through dramatic installations and art that unflinchingly confronted the visceral realities of women\u2019s bodies. These used her own body and experiences to create artworks that connected emotionally as raw cries of anguish. Or of lost innocence. <\/p>\n The latter comes out particularly in her short film Why I Never Became a Dancer<\/a> (1995), deliberately placed near the start of the exhibition. In this, affectionate shots of Emin\u2019s childhood hometown of Margate jarringly contrast with her narration of sexual abuse and misogyny.<\/p>\n A still from Why I Never Became a Dancer by Tracey Emin (1995). This voiceover reflects Emin\u2019s talent for pithy, poignant and allusive language. Appliqued into quilts such as Mad Tracey from Margate. Everyone\u2019s Been There<\/a> (1997), or expressed in the emotionally charged titles of artworks and neon signs, Emin\u2019s words \u2013 as well as her body \u2013 confront her trauma.<\/p>\n Some of these works do so by foregrounding love, desire, longing, betrayal and abuse. Others resist the silence and stigma that have for so long shrouded women\u2019s bodily functions.<\/p>\n The exploration of the soul<\/p>\n Throughout the exhibition, Emin\u2019s work is deeply personal. Yet, by centring her own experience, Emin also humanises and universalises it. You don\u2019t have to have had an abortion, or even be a woman, to respond emotionally to a work like The Last of the Gold (2002), publicly exhibited here for the first time.<\/p>\n Similarly, her textual contributions universalise the experiences of victimhood. Her handwritten memoir, Exploration of the Soul<\/a> (1994), for example, movingly conveys a child\u2019s attempt to understand the cruelty of unspoken racism.<\/p>\n Despite the trauma, throughout there\u2019s an indomitable sense of defiance. Sewn into the quilt No Chance (WHAT A YEAR)<\/a> (1999) a small text responds to her rapists pointing abusively at her: \u201cI was only 13 and even then I knew they were pointing the wrong way.\u201d In the same way, Why I Never Became a Dancer ends with Emin defiantly showing us her moves.<\/p>\n Quilts on display at Tracey Emin: A Second Life. This combination of vulnerability and strength gives Emin\u2019s work its emotional richness. This also comes out in her determination to document the trauma of her cancer. In works that take on the taboos around this disease, Emin depicts the procedures that our society squeamishly hides away in hospitals and the impact that these have had upon her body.<\/p>\n Of course, one of the most celebrated of her works does not directly feature her body but its absence. Yet My Bed<\/a> (1998) is still a self-portrait of the traces of her life. Alongside the dishevelled bed and assorted detritus on and around it, what really struck me, seeing it for the first time, were the adjacent suitcases, packed and ready and the layered stories wordlessly conveyed in this installation. My Bed may on one level be an extended metaphor for struggling with depression, but the suitcases also speak of the will to escape.<\/p>\n Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made<\/a> (1996) is another even larger installation dealing with depression. It takes up an entire room in this exhibition. During pregnancy and in the aftermath of her abortions, Emin found it impossible to paint. The text behind the box containing this installation states: \u201cI hated my body \u2026 I was suffering from guilt and punishing myself so I threw myself in a box and gave myself three and a half weeks to sort it out. And I did.\u201d<\/p>\n Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made by Tracey Emin (1996). The result is an insight into the artist\u2019s studio as well as their body and mind. It reminded me of the installation of Francis Bacon\u2019s studio in Dublin<\/a>. Emin has cited the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch as a major influence, even holding an exhibition of her own work alongside that of Munch entitled The Loneliness of the Soul<\/a> at the Royal Academy in 2021. Yet, to me, the comparisons with Bacon are more striking, both in the subject matters of sex and trauma and in the solemnity of their larger canvases.<\/p>\n Read more: This was particularly marked in the final room. Throughout the exhibition the walls are painted a petrol blue, the same shade that Bacon used for oppressive interiors such as Man at a Washbasin<\/a> (1954). This, combined with subdued lighting, produces a womb-like atmosphere. The intimacy this creates both heightens the emotional connection and impact on the viewer and shows Emin\u2019s work to best effect.<\/p>\n It might seem odd to create such an ambience when so many of the artworks deal with trauma. Yet, although Emin observes what is happening to her body, literally in the case of I Watched Myself Die and Come Alive<\/a> (2023) that fills the final wall of the final room, her art also has a detached, transcendent quality. <\/p>\n The spiritual atmosphere of that final room, with identically sized canvasses hung along it like altarpieces \u2013 including one of The Crucifixion (2022)<\/a> \u2013 speaks through the spectral traces of bodies in the artworks more of the soul than the body, less of trauma than of the transcendence of pain.<\/p>\n![\"Tracey](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/file-20260226-85-aggqms.jpg\")
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\n Tracey Emin\/DACS 2026<\/p>\n![\"Quilts](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/file-20260226-57-wsonnj.jpg\")
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\n Tate (Sonal Bakrania)<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/file-20260226-57-fongeg.jpg\")
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\n Tracey Emin\/DACS 2026<\/p>\n
\n Francis Bacon: Human Presence \u2013 a compelling look at how the artist redefined portraiture<\/a><\/p>\n
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