The largest-ever exhibition of works by the UK artist Tracey Emin is due to open at Tate Modern in London next year, and will include more than 90 works including the headline-hitting installation My Bed (1998).
A Second Life will encompass neon, sculpture, paintings, videos and textiles spanning 40 years. According to a Tate statement, the show will demonstrate “her uncompromising confessional approach to sharing experiences of love, trauma and personal growth”.
The show will begin by presenting works from Emin’s first solo exhibition at White Cube gallery in London, My Major Retrospective 1982-93, which opened in 1993. White Cube says the show “comprised over a hundred objects Emin had collected over the years, in what constituted a continuing act of almost obsessive assemblage”. White Cube items included in the Tate exhibition will include small-scale photographs of Emin’s paintings made at art school in the 1980s.
The section on early works will also include the autobiographical video Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995), drawing on her adolescence in the UK seaside town of Margate. According to Xavier Hufkens Gallery, which represents Emin, in the video “the artist speaks over these images, explaining that she gave up school at 13 to hang out in cafés and bars, or drink cider on the beach.
“Her favourite pastime, she says, was sex: ‘It was something you could just do, and it was for free’. She goes on to chronicle her routine, sleeping with men much older than herself.”
Margate will feature prominently throughout the exhibition. “Emphasising the turbulent years she spent there, Mad Tracey From Margate: Everybody’s Been There 1997 lays bare her most intimate thoughts through hand stitched phrases, letters and drawings,” says Tate. The wooden sculpture It’s Not the Way I Want to Die (2005) is based on the rollercoaster at Margate’s famous Dreamland funfair.
The exhibition will also address the artist’s experience of abortion, in pieces such as How It Feels (1996). “The film gives a difficult, yet empowering account of the physical and psychological dimensions of refusing motherhood,” says Xavier Hufkens. The Last of the Gold (2002), displayed for the first time, is emblazoned with an “A to Z of abortion” guide.
My Bed, the sculpture comprising condoms, pillows and a duvet, forms the centrepiece of the Tate show. When the work was installed at Tate Britain in 2015, Emin said: “When I’m installing the bed it’s kind of really sad and very depressing because I’m actually going into a time capsule of my past. All of the things that are round the bed no longer relate to my life at all, but I’ve got to say I’d be really stupid to be unhappy about this moment.”
Emin’s “second life” is explored in the final section, through the artist’s recent paintings and sculptures, such as Ascension (2024), which reflect her philosophy following major surgeries for bladder cancer. “I feel this show will be a benchmark for me. A moment in my life when I look back and go forward. A true celebration of living,” says Emin in a statement.
- A Second Life, Tate Modern, London, 26 February 2026-31 August
