The biggest ever exhibition of Tracey Emin artworks comes to Tate Modern next spring.
Tracey Emin: A Second Life — on at the Bankside gallery from 26 February-30 August 2026 — will span the artist's striking, and highly versatile, 40-year career, featuring 90 works encompassing painting, video, textile, neon, sculpture and installation.
Pieces span from My Major Retrospective 1982-93 — a series of tiny photographs of Emin's art school paintings from the 1980s, which she later destroyed, to Ascension — a bronze sculpture she crafted in 2024, exploring her new relationship with her body following major bladder cancer surgery.
A Second Life will also star the neon 'I could have Loved my Innocence' — which explores the artist's personal trauma and pain following sexual assault — as well as 1998's My Bed, a groundbreaking work that documents an alcohol-fuelled breakdown, and was nominated for the Turner Prize, as well as being lambasted by critics at the time for being 'filthy, disgusting, and immoral'.
Though based in Margate for much of her life, Emin's art — which is arresting, raw and rarely fails to stir some kind of reaction — has been woven into the tapestry of London; her portraits of women adorning the National Portrait Gallery's doors, and her neon scrawl 'I want my time with you' greeting thousands of passengers at St Pancras station each day.
2026 is already shaping up to be a blockbuster year for exhibitions of major living artists; in March, Serpentine North will host a free show of David Hockney's recent works.
Tracey Emin: A Second Life, Tate Modern, 26 February-30 August 2026
