This review first appeared in the April 2026 issue of The Critic.

If the enduring appeal of some artists, such as the singer Madonna, can be attributed to their ability to reinvent themselves, the opposite is true of Tracey Emin. Contrary to her reputation as the most volatile artist of the YBA generation, cultivated by her pursuit of uncomfortably intimate subjects and the occasional public outburst, Emin has remained the same throughout her career. A Second Life, a major exhibition at Tate, is thus not so much a fresh start for the 62-year-old Emin as an opportunity to finally take her concerns in earnest.

Already, the earliest of Emin’s works included in the display — My Major Retrospective II consist of miniature photographic reproductions of her art school paintings from the 1980s, which she destroyed as inadequate — show the self-affirming, autobiographical obsession with which the artist became synonymous. Yet a series of blanket-sized appliqués, like the 1993 Hotel International, whose title refers to the Margate property the artist’s parents managed, narrate Emin’s anxiety about her future and an obsession with making more of herself than her circumstances. These sentiments, and the way Emin would go on to voice them (in her interminable neon sloganeering, for example), are a profoundly English brand of platitude.

Indeed, this part of Emin’s oeuvre is a mixture of confidence and apprehension that characterised not only the artist’s early career but also much of British society in the final decades of the millennium. As the protective charm of the Union Flag waned (a feature in another fabric work), the momentum of the sexual revolution outran its course (the artist speaks of being called a “slag” by Margate boys in a video), and class and ethnic narratives became entangled (many handwritten confessional pieces dwell on prejudice), Emin, like many around her, turned to and on herself. 

Tracey Emin: A Second Life continues at Tate Modern until 31 August.
Main image: Tracey Emin, The End of Love, 2024. © Tracey Emin.