Tracey Emin (b. 1963, London) is one of Britain’s most prominent contemporary artists, known for her deeply personal, confessional, and emotionally raw work across media including drawing, painting, installation, sculpture, film, photography, neon, and embroidery. A leading figure of the Young British Artists (YBAs), Emin first gained public attention in the 1990s for works that defied convention and embraced vulnerability, memory, and autobiography.

Her breakthrough came with Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995), a tent appliquéd with names of everyone she had shared a bed with—family, lovers, and unborn children. In 1999, she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize with My Bed, an unflinching installation of her own unmade bed surrounded by personal debris, capturing a moment of profound emotional crisis. These works, both iconic and controversial, redefined intimacy and confession in contemporary art.

Emin’s practice is rooted in self-portraiture and life experience, confronting themes of love, sexuality, trauma, illness, and mortality with striking honesty. Her neon text works, embroidered quilts, and raw figural drawings extend her exploration of the female body and inner life. More recently, her large-scale sculpture The Mother (2021), permanently installed beside Oslo’s Munch Museum, honors both her own mother and Edvard Munch’s legacy—an artist who deeply influenced her.

In 2020, following a cancer diagnosis and major surgery, Emin returned to painting with renewed intensity, channeling her physical and emotional reality into gestural, urgent works. She lives and works between London, the South of France, and Margate, where she founded TKE Studios and a free residency program for emerging artists.

Emin has exhibited internationally, with major shows at Tate Britain, the Musée d’Orsay, Munchmuseet, and the Royal Academy. She was appointed Professor of Drawing at the RA in 2011 and was made a Dame in 2024 for her services to art.

“ There should be something revelatory about art. It should be totally creative and open doors for new thoughts and experiences. „

—Tracey Emin