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Tracey Emin

born 1963

Stay Up 2014
© Tracey Emin
License this image
In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Rooms

9 artworks by Tracey Emin
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Biography

Dame Tracey Karima Emin (; born 3 July 1963) is an English artist known for autobiographical and confessional artwork. She produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and sewn appliqué. Once the "enfant terrible" of the Young British Artists in the 1980s, Tracey Emin is now a Royal Academician.

In 1997, her work Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, a tent appliquéd with the names of everyone the artist had ever slept with, was shown at Charles Saatchi's Sensation exhibition held at the Royal Academy in London. In the same year, she gained considerable media exposure when she swore repeatedly when drunk on a live British TV discussion programme called The Death of Painting.

In 1999, Emin had her first solo exhibition in the United States at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, entitled Every Part of Me's Bleeding. Later that year, she was a Turner Prize nominee and exhibited My Bed – a readymade installation, consisting of her own unmade dirty bed, in which she had spent several weeks drinking, smoking, eating, sleeping and having sexual intercourse while undergoing a period of severe emotional flux. The artwork featured used condoms and blood-stained underwear.

Emin is also a panellist and speaker: she has lectured at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney (2010), the Royal Academy of Arts (2008), and the Tate Britain in London (2005) about the links between creativity and autobiography, and the role of subjectivity and personal histories in constructing art. In December 2011, she was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy; with Fiona Rae, she is one of the first two female professors since the Academy was founded in 1768. Emin lived in Spitalfields, East London, before returning to Margate, where she funds the TKE Studios with workspace for aspiring artists.

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Installation art Feminist art Abject art 1 more art term …

Artworks

Left Right
  • My Bed

    Tracey Emin
    1998
  • [no title]

    Tracey Emin
    1994
    View by appointment
  • Going to Crack

    Tracey Emin
    1997
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  • Terribly Wrong

    Tracey Emin
    1997
    View by appointment
  • 80%-20% Canada

    Tracey Emin
    1997
    View by appointment
  • Sad Shower in New York

    Tracey Emin
    1995
    View by appointment
  • From the Week of Hell ‘94

    Tracey Emin
    1995
    View by appointment
  • Fuck You Eddy

    Tracey Emin
    1995
    View by appointment
See all 35

Artist as subject

Left Right
  • The Last Thing I Said to You was Don’t Leave Me Here II

    Tracey Emin
    2000
  • Tracey Emin C.V.

    Tracey Emin
    1995
  • Tracey Emin C.V. Cunt Vernacular

    Tracey Emin
    1997
  • May Dodge, My Nan

    Tracey Emin
    1963–93
  • Exploration of the Soul

    Tracey Emin
    1994
  • Monument Valley (Grand Scale)

    Tracey Emin
    1995–7
  • Albert, Bert and Andy (I couldn’t stop it)

    Tracey Emin
    1997
    View by appointment

Film and audio

  • Podcast

    Walks of art: Grace Dent on the YBAs and Shoreditch

  • Interview

    Tracey Emin in Conversation

  • TateShots

    Tracey Emin in conversation with Peter Blake

  • TateShots

    Tracey Emin, 'My Bed'

Related art terms

Installation art Feminist Art Abject art Young British Artists (YBA)

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