A Journey To Death is Tracey Emin’s latest work that explores the trauma of surgery for the cancer that almost claimed her life. The artist has been painting, drawing and photographing herself for a long time, but these latest nudes are her grandest and most painfully resonant work yet. Emin has always made art about her physical existence and subjects that had felt unspeakably private, from sexual assault, devastating heartbreak, ambivalence around motherhood, grief and longing, to the adolescent sexuality and menopause. Her work offers companionship for many women going though difficult and painful experiences. Made in 2021, in these spindly blue-black pictures she is feeling her way through to a route back into art. In making herself the subject of her work, and concentrating intensely on figuration, Emin creates bridges with the rich art-historical tradition of the female figure and female nudes. She shows strong emotive force in these pictures, as seen for example in the work of male painters Munch and Schiele, which Emin admires and studied throughout her artistic oeuvre.
“ If I’m not making art, I don’t feel alive. A big part of me will feel dead: I’m not Tracey, I don’t exist. I felt so much better after this work. It’s like, ‘Ah – ah – ah – I’m alive „