Tracey Karima Emin (Parents: Enver Emin and Pam Emin; Twin brother: Paul) Tracey Emin (born 1963) is a preeminent British contemporary artist and a leading figure of the Young British Artists (YBAs) movement that emerged in the 1990s. She is globally recognized for her deeply autobiographical, provocative, and confessional approach to art, using her own life, traumas, and vulnerabilities as her primary subject matter.
Raised in the seaside town of Margate, her tumultuous youth—marked by emotional and financial instability—heavily informs her aesthetic. She studied at the Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. Emin rose to international prominence in the late 1990s with deeply personal installations. Her breakthrough work, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995), was a tent appliquéd with the names of everyone she had shared a bed with.
She cemented her status as a cultural lightning rod with her 1998 installation My Bed. Shortlisted for the Turner Prize, the piece consisted of her actual unmade bed, surrounded by detritus such as empty liquor bottles, cigarette butts, and stained linens, representing a period of severe depression. The work sparked intense public and critical debate regarding the definition and boundaries of modern art.
Emin’s practice spans a wide variety of media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, appliquéd textiles, and her highly recognizable neon text signs featuring handwritten, emotionally raw phrases. Over the decades, her status shifted from a rebellious outsider to a pillar of the British art establishment. In 2007, she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale. In 2011, she was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, making her the first woman to hold the position since the institution’s founding in 1768.
Following a severe, life-altering battle with bladder cancer in 2020, Emin experienced a major creative resurgence, returning primarily to visceral, highly emotional acrylic painting. She has also become a significant patron of the arts in her hometown of Margate, establishing the Tracey Emin Foundation and TKE Studios to provide subsidized spaces and residencies for emerging artists.
Active in others filds : Academia (Professor at the Royal Academy), Writing/Literature (Author of the memoir Strangeland), Philanthropy (Founder
