Tracey Emin doesn’t make art to decorate rooms. She makes it to survive.

 

Article by Germano D’Acquisto

 

 

Sex and Solitude. There is no better synthesis, no more fitting formula to describe the intricate and painful universe surrounding Tracey Emin. The English artist is like a survivor, one of those soldiers who return from the frontlines, marked in body, face, and heart. Emin has fought many wars—against the abuse she suffered as a child and adolescent, against violent men, against miscarriages, and, more recently, against cancer.

Tracey has always confronted us with her pain, unfiltered, uncensored, and without limits. She has done so through drawings, tapestries, embroideries, sculptures, films, and installations, which encapsulate all the violence and despair of contemporary society. In a career spanning thirty years, she has brought to light the darkest, most fragile, and emotional corners of human experience. "There’s nothing more beautiful than honesty, even if it’s painful to look at," she once admitted.

Now, her artistic universe arrives in Florence. Palazzo Strozzi, from March 16 to July 20, is hosting an extensive retrospective—the largest ever organized in Italy. The title? Of course, “Sex and Solitude". On display are over sixty works spanning various moments of her life and career, from the 1990s to the present. More than an anthology, the exhibition is an intimate and personal journey through themes of the body and desire.

Many works have never been shown before. For instance, the monumental bronze sculpture "I Followed You To The End” (2024), exhibited in dialogue with the Renaissance space of the courtyard, or the historic installation "Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made” (1996), reconstructed in one of the rooms on the Piano Nobile. A significant portion of the exhibition is dedicated to her paintings. Works like “It - didn’t stop - I didn’t stop” (2019) or “There was blood” (2022) blend abstraction and figuration, with the latter ultimately prevailing, leaving fragments of bodies and images with intense sexual energy on the canvas.

Figures in her paintings struggle, some seem resigned to their fate, while others fight relentlessly, refusing to give up. In her work, the specific act is never directly depicted; instead, she captures the emotions it evokes. Passion, sexuality, and melancholy are all present in her artistic universe, where desire and love intertwine with suffering and sacrifice. Above all, there is the chaos of someone who, despite not having all the answers, never stops searching.

Born in 1963 to an English mother of Romanichal descent and a Turkish-Cypriot father, Tracey grew up in Margate, by the sea, where she recently opened the Tracey Karima Emin (TKE) Studios, a professional space for artists. She discovered her passion for art in the late 1980s. She was labeled as one of the Young British Artists, a group of rather restless visual artists known for their so-called shock tactics, use of recycled materials, unconventional lives, and an attitude described as both antagonistic and entrepreneurial. Among them were Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, and Ian Davenport. Emin became one of the standout figures of this bold and talented movement, championed by Charles Saatchi. The defining moment of her career came in 1999 when she was nominated for the Turner Prize and exhibited her installation “My Bed" at the Tate Gallery. The piece, created the previous year during a period of emotional turmoil, unapologetically displayed the artist’s unmade bed surrounded by deeply personal items such as condoms, blood-stained underwear, empty vodka bottles, and cigarette butts. From that moment on, everything changed. Tracey became a star, her recognition grew exponentially, and so did the value of her works.

In 2007, she represented the UK at the Venice Biennale. Four years later, she was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy, becoming one of the first two women to hold this position in the institution’s history. Last year, King Charles III awarded her the title of "Dame Commander" of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to contemporary art. Amidst these honors came a great burden: in 2020, she was diagnosed with bladder cancer, an illness so aggressive that it seemed it might prevail. “I totally accepted death—absolutely, totally,” she said. “I think accepting death on such a profound level is what kept me alive.” Tracey ultimately won yet another battle, one that further etched the lines on her face but also allowed her to shine brighter than ever. As she herself explained, “When you’ve had cancer to the level that I had, where you really think you’re probably going to die, and you’re looking at months ahead to live—and then suddenly everything turns around—it’s like being born again. All these amazing things happen, and life starts anew. Today I don’t drink alcohol anymore. I don’t go out very often. I have to wear baggy elasticated clothing, and I have to carry a giant bag of piss around with me most of the time. But strangely enough, I have never been happier.”