Wild, confessional brutally honest as well as tender and extremely vulnerable. In the groundbreaking practice of Tracey Emin, one of the most important figures of contemporary art, art and creativity literally become questions of life and death.
Tracey Emin (born 1963) uses herself, talks about herself – some would say exposes – and is thus both the engine and mechanism in the production of images of herself. It may sound private and self-indulgent, but this very honest approach to the world has proven to have a direct, powerful appeal to an enormous number of people, ever since Emin broke through on the international art scene.
Louisiana presents the artist’s work as an unguarded and sustained investigation of life through art. Organised by Tate Modern, the exhibition follows almost forty years of practice across painting, drawing, sculpture, textile, film, and installation. Emin’s work is often described through confession, but the stronger word may be exposure: she uses her own body, memories, pain, sexuality, illness, and survival as material without allowing them to become simple autobiography. The exhibition includes recent works and gives particular attention to her commitment to painting. It places well-known moments from the Young British Artists period within a broader story of endurance, vulnerability, and creative force. At Louisiana, Emin appears not only as a provocateur, but as an artist for whom making is inseparable from staying alive.
Survival through Art
Including painting, drawing, sculpture, textile, film and installation, this exhibition – created in close collaboration with the artist and containing works that have never been shown before – unfolds the full story of and about Tracey Emin. A life in images, marked by rape, abortion and very serious illness – as well as by courage and struggle, despair and joy and the sheer power of surviving through art and creativity.
The show aims to trace almost 40 years of groundbreaking practice, highlighting how Tracey Emin continually challenges boundaries and uses the female body as a powerful tool to explore passion, trauma, pain and healing.
The exhibition also focuses on Tracey Emin’s lifelong commitment to painting and shows a number of her most recent works – a provisional culmination of the countless ways in which she has managed to channel her life into her art.
The exhibition Tracey Emin: A Second Life is organised by Tate Modern, London in cooperation with Louisiana. With support from the C.L. David Foundation and Collection.
Tracey Emin: A Second Life
8.10.26 – 18.4.2
