Tracey Emin: Tate Surveys a Career of Raw Confession

Three decades after she scandalised and electrified Britain with 'My Bed' and a tent embroidered with the names of everyone she'd ever slept with, Tracey Emin is the subject of a major Tate survey in 2026 — a chance to see a whole, unflinchingly honest career in one place.

Emin turned her own life — love, loss, sex, grief, illness and survival — into art of searing directness, in neon, stitch, bronze and, increasingly, monumental, gestural painting.

Now based in her native Margate, where she has founded her own art school, she has travelled from provocateur to elder stateswoman of British art without ever softening her voice. The show reminds us why that voice still cuts so deep.

Image: “Turner Contemporary gallery” — DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.