Dame Tracey Emin

Tracy Emin’s art is one of disclosure, using her life events as inspiration for works ranging from painting, neon, drawing, video, and installation to photography, needlework, and sculpture. Emin reveals her hopes, humiliations, failures, and successes in candid and, at times, excoriating work. Emin’s art has an immediacy and often sexually provocative attitude that firmly locates her oeuvre within the tradition of feminist discourse. Her paintings, monoprints, and drawings explore complex personal states and ideas of self-representation through manifestly expressionist styles and themes.

Tracey Emin was born in London in 1963 and studied at Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and was elected a Royal Academician in the same year. In 2011, Emin became the Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. In June 2024, King Charles III appointed her Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts.

Emin lives and works between London, the South of France, and Margate. Her next solo exhibition will be held at Tate Modern in Spring 2026.