Tracey Emin’s New Works: The Evolution of Her Art After Cancer
No! This Is Sad © Tracey Emin 2022
Tracey Emin
91 works
Key Takeaways
Tracey Emin returns to the art world with I Followed You to the End, a new exhibition at White Cube, London. Following her battle with cancer, Emin's new work reflects themes of survival, mortality, and love, blending personal pain with universal themes of resilience. Her journey through illness has reshaped her art, offering a powerful meditation on life, death, and renewal.
In 2024, Dame Tracey Emin made a powerful return to the art world with a new exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey in London, titled I Followed You to the End. This exhibition not only signifies her reemergence, but also marks a profound evolution in her artistic practice. Having endured and survived an aggressive battle with bladder cancer in 2020, Emin’s recovery has deeply informed her creative process, leading to works that explore themes of survival, love, and mortality. Her art in this exhibition reveals an intensified emotional depth and vulnerability, highlighting how personal adversity continues to shape her evolving artistic expression.
Themes of Survival, Mortality, and Love
Confronting Mortality
Emin’s confrontation with her own mortality, brought on by her diagnosis of bladder cancer and subsequent major surgery, has reshaped her artistic narrative in profound ways. Mortality, once a distant abstraction, now permeates her work with an immediacy that is both raw and visceral. Previously, Emin’s body was emblematic of emotional vulnerability, a recurring subject in her exploration of trauma, desire, and personal history. Now, her physical form has taken on new meaning, becoming a symbol of the frailty of existence itself. Through this lens, Emin’s works navigate the precarious boundary between life and death, expressing the stark reality of her experience with cancer, and the equally delicate process of healing.
Her art becomes a kind of visual memoir, documenting not just the physicality of her illness, but also the emotional turmoil of realising one's mortality. The works are imbued with a sombre reverence for life’s transient nature, offering viewers a glimpse into her personal battle, not only with cancer, but with the existential questions it raises. Emin’s intimate portrayal of survival speaks to the human condition itself, showing how art can serve as a conduit for processing trauma, transforming personal pain into collective understanding. Through her deeply personal exploration of mortality, Emin has created a body of work that is both a testament to her resilience, and a profound meditation on the impermanence of existence.
Blood as a Symbol of Life
One of the most striking and recurring motifs in Emin’s recent paintings is her use of blood-red hues, a vivid and unsettling reminder of both suffering and survival. For Emin, blood is not just a metaphor for violence or pain; it becomes a powerful symbol of life itself, marking the persistence of life even in the face of trauma. The visceral reds in her works echo the physical reality of her own body, speaking to the duality of pain and vitality.
Beyond the stark intensity of this symbol, Emin’s use of domestic motifs, such as her beloved cat in The End of Love 2024 (2024), softens the narrative with moments of tenderness, juxtaposing the harshness of her reality with glimpses of solace and continuity. These elements weave together a complex dialogue between pain and warmth, between suffering and love, creating a layered portrayal of life’s perseverance.
Emin’s Unplanned, Fluid Artistic Process
Throughout her career, Emin has garnered recognition for her deeply personal, and often unfiltered approach to art, transforming her vulnerabilities into profound artistic statements. Her seminal 1998 piece My Bed, which famously depicted the chaotic state of her life amidst emotional turmoil, became a pivotal moment in contemporary art, embodying her confessional style. This fearless exposure of her inner world has evolved over the years, and with her recent works, Emin brings that same unflinching gaze to a new subject; her own survival. Where My Bed captured emotional distress, these latest paintings delve into the corporeal, confronting the reality of living with a stoma following bladder cancer. The stoma, a visceral reminder of her experience, serves as both a literal representation of her altered body, and a powerful metaphor for human fragility.
Emin has often described how she approaches the canvas without a preconceived plan, allowing her emotions and subconscious to dictate the direction of each piece. This intuitive method reflects the way she navigates her post-recovery life; the layers in her paintings, built up and reworked over time, mirror this emotional complexity. Each image feels both deeply personal and universally relatable, inviting the viewer into a shared space of vulnerability and resilience. Cats, beds, and domestic interiors are interwoven with symbols of suffering and survival, juxtaposing the ordinary with the extraordinary weight of living through cancer. Through this lens, Emin transforms everyday objects into vessels for existential reflection. Her ability to extract meaning from the personal, and amplify it into something that resonates with broader human experience, is a hallmark of her practice, making her new works as compelling and thought-provoking as ever.
Symbolism in Emin’s Recent Work
The Bed as a Symbol of Life’s Cycles
The bed has long been a potent symbol in Emin's oeuvre, and in her recent paintings, it continues to resonate with profound significance. Initially emblematic of emotional chaos and vulnerability, the bed now encapsulates the intricate cycles of life; encompassing rest, illness, love, and death. This evolution reflects a deeper understanding of existence, where the bed serves as a liminal space where these cycles intersect and unfold. Through her representations of the bed's duality, Emin illustrates the complex interplay between suffering and renewal.
Middle Eastern and Domestic Motifs
In her more recent works, Emin subtly intertwines elements of her Middle Eastern heritage and domestic life, enriching her visual narrative with layers of cultural symbolism. These motifs, often represented as patterned rugs, household items, or traditional designs, serve as visual anchors that ground her in familiar comforts. By reflecting on her domestic life, she highlights the transformative power of home as a refuge in times of turmoil.
Exploring the Exhibition: I Followed You to the End
A Journey Through Loss and Healing
Emin’s I Followed You to the End exhibition serves as a poignant journey through her deeply personal experiences of loss and healing, encapsulating the complexities of her emotional landscape post-surgery. Central to this exhibition are key pieces such as Blood-Blood and More Blood and Not Fuckable, which powerfully articulate her connection to her body in the aftermath of her battle with cancer. Each artwork functions as a visual diary that chronicles not only her physical recovery, but also the internal emotions that accompany such profound trauma.
Emin’s technique, characterised by bold strokes and vivid colours, amplifies the intensity of her emotions. The dynamic interplay between form and colour in her works embodies the struggle to reclaim agency over her body, highlighting both the fragility and the strength required to navigate the aftermath of illness. Emin reclaims her narrative, transforming her suffering into an assertion of survival that invites the audience to reflect on their own experiences of loss and healing.
Video and Sculpture Components
Expanding beyond traditional painting, Emin's exhibition also embraces video and sculpture, further enriching her artistic narrative. One of the most striking elements is a short video that reveals her stoma, offering a profoundly intimate portrayal of her survival. By sharing this personal moment, Emin encourages viewers to engage with the complexities of the human experience, fostering empathy and understanding in a society often reluctant to confront the less palatable aspects of health struggles. Moreover, the impressive bronze sculpture, I Followed You to the End, standing at seven metres tall, encapsulates a primal and almost mythic representation of the female body. This large-scale work signifies a bold embrace of physicality, serving as a powerful counterpoint to the limitations imposed by her illness. The sheer scale of the sculpture commands attention, compelling viewers to confront their own perceptions of the body and its narratives.
A New Relationship with Life and Art
Reflection on Personal Growth
Emin's recent body of work represents a significant evolution in both her personal and artistic journey, reflecting profound changes shaped by her experience with cancer and her subsequent recovery. In navigating the tumultuous landscape of illness, Emin has fostered a new understanding of her creative practice, viewing painting as not merely a medium of expression, but as a vital culmination of her lifelong artistic exploration. This shift has imbued her work with a sense of urgency and relevance that resonates deeply with audiences.
Through this new relationship with life and art, Emin demonstrates that creativity can serve as a powerful conduit for healing and understanding. Her work stands as a testament to the capacity for growth and transformation, encouraging both herself and her audience to embrace the complexities of their experiences. In doing so, she redefines the role of the artist in society, positioning herself as a crucial voice in the discourse on survival, resilience, and the transformative power of art.
Acceptance and Beauty in Pain
Emin’s acceptance of her limitations is not a sign of defeat, but rather a testament to her enduring spirit. Her works, filled with emotional honesty, resonate with themes of perseverance, love, and the human capacity for finding grace in suffering. Her return to painting after illness is a testament to her resilience and a reminder of art’s power to heal. As she looks to the future, with plans for new exhibitions and a focus on her legacy, Emin’s work continues to evolve, offering a deeply personal narrative that will leave a lasting impact on the art world.
As Emin continues to evolve, her art becomes a powerful reminder of the importance of vulnerability and authenticity in the creative process. By sharing her journey so openly, she inspires others to find their voices amidst the struggles of life, reinforcing the notion that art is a vital means of processing pain and celebrating survival. Through her transformative journey, Emin reminds us that art, in its most authentic form, can serve as both a refuge and a beacon of hope, guiding us through the intricate dance of life and loss.
Tracey Emin
91 works
