Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
27 February – 31 August 2026
Bringing together over a hundred works, this exhibition celebrates Emin’s 40 years practice, you walk through Emin’s journalised, confessional life. Her very distinctive mark making endures throughout the show from the earliest piece to the most recent work, bound together by her persona, directness, passion and pragmatism. It’s a frank narrative, she is forthright about how she was abused from the age of fourteen, abortion and her ‘Second Life’ after the bladder cancer diagnosis of five years ago. The first half of the exhibition is alive with Emin intensity, the second half is regrettably unfulfilling, the newer works foreseeable and repetitive.
My Bed, 1963-1993.
The career-defining feminist installation that caused controversy in 1999.
Why I Never Became a Dancer, video, 1995.
Emin narrates imagery from her teenage years in Margate. A very revealing commentary describing school, sexual encounters as an early teen, and her dancing ambitions, culminating in an uplifting dance to Sylvester’s, You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).
Mad Tracey From Margate: Everyone’s Been There, appliquéd blanket, 1997. An autobiographical map featuring diary and childhood memories.
‘Is This a Joke?’, Mixed media, embroidered blanket, 2009.
A distinctively Emin use of language and image to express trauma and distress.
My Major Retrospective, 1963-1993.
Mounting numerous small photographs of collected ephemera on small squares cut from the last canvas she bought.
Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, Installation, 1996.
Naked Photos-Life Model Goes Mad 1-111, Photographs, inkjet prints on paper, 1996. Emin locked herself naked in a gallery for three weeks to reconcile her feelings about painting; installation includes the resulting artworks.
Corridor gallery with two series of photographic self-portraits on either side. Early Emin Polaroid ‘glamour’ shots on one side, and Emin images from her cancer treatment on the other side.
Death Mask, Distressed bronze cast with gold plating, 2002.
One of four ‘life masks’ made in 2002, it was the first sculptural work that she made in bronze, a medium now central to her practice.
Recent paintings. I Needed You To Love Me, Acrylic on canvas, 2023, I Did Nothing
Wrong, Acrylic paint on canvas, 2024, The Crucifixion, Acrylic paint on canvas, 2022.
