Tracey Emin - A Second Life: Tate Modern
- Catherine Flutsch
- 18 minutes ago
- 2 min read
★★★★★
Exhibition Review: Tracey Emin - A Second Life: Tate Modern, Open 31 August 2026. Book tickets here.
[Disclosure: Our reviewer attended the press preview on 25 February for free for the purposes of this review.]
Tracey Emin has described A Second Life as a celebration of life. Leaving the press view, I experienced the exhibition as a celebration of survival and resilience.
The exhibition traces Emin’s artistic trajectory from early works consumed by trauma to recent paintings and bronzes shaped by reflection and perspective. Seen together, this body of work shows us that that from the outset Emin’s work has influenced how we think about gender, autobiography, trauma and emotional truth in art.
The inclusion of My Bed (1998), first shown at Tate Britain during the 1999 Turner Prize exhibition, reminds us how profoundly Emin shifted the terms of artistic discourse. Met with shock and misogyny from predominately male critics, even at the time, the work struck a chord with many who understood the reality of living with depression.
This is not an easy exhibition to visit. Emin’s disregard for any boundary between the personal and the public remains as extreme now as it was in the 1990s. Two harrowing film works recount sexual violence and a botched abortion in unflinching detail; these require a degree of emotional strength, and anyone feeling fragile for any reason may wish to skip them.
My favourite part of the exhibition is the final room, which displays Emin’s most recent work, primarily painting, which now sits at the centre of her practice. Where Emin’s earlier work feels like trauma being processed in real time, the paintings on display in the final room show a perspective, and feel like the culmination of a lifetime of reflection.
A Second Life traces Emin’s journey from a young working-class woman grappling with devastating abuse and discrimination to one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists, working at the height of her powers. I can’t wait to see what this most truthful of artists produces in her second life.
Feature image Your Beautiful Soul, 2024. All images ©️ Catherine Flutsch 2026 - taken by Catherine at the press view.
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