As she unveils the biggest most ambitious show of her career, Tracey Emin speaks about getting the most out of life and hits out at Nigel Farage
Dame Tracey Emin has vowed to “make the most of every moment” of her life as she unveiled her new art show at the Tate Modern. The largest exhibition of her work ever, it will look back at Dame Tracey’s 40-year-career and includes defining works alongside pieces that have never been exhibited publicly before.
The title of the show is A Second Life, which refers to her near-death experience in 2020 when she was diagnosed with squamous cell cancer, requiring over seven hours of surgery and losing some of her organs in the process.
The work at the Tate is divided into rooms of work before and after this moment, with her iconic work My Bed from 1998 acting as the dividing point. Asked if the experience had changed her, Dame Tracey, 62, said: “I didn’t come close to dying like a collision, I was told I probably had six months to live and if the surgery worked I had a year-and-a-half. I am still here over five years later with no signs of cancer and I am so happy about that. It’s brilliant.
“I live in a kind of bubble, a survivor thing. What I know is while I am here now I have got to make the most of every moment, I have got to enjoy my painting and enjoy my life, and be as bold and honest as possible. I always have been, but I think before I was a bit slippery with stuff and now there is none of that. What you see is what you get, and what you see is what you get with my art. I wasn’t afraid of dying, I was more afraid of living, so I have to get used to it and enjoy it more.”
READ MORE: Tracey Emin ‘looked death in the face’ after cancer diagnosis’ and is grateful to be aliveREAD MORE: “My idea of heaven”: Madonna sings the praises of seaside resort Margate
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A Second Life brings together more than 100 works encompassing painting, video, textile, neon, sculpture and installation and will look at how Dame Tracey has used the “female body as a powerful tool to explore passion, pain, and healing”.
Regular hard-hitting themes of her work include abortion, rape as well as sex, love and loss. Dame Tracey’s quilt, The Last of the Gold 2002, which is emblazoned with an “A to Z of abortion” providing advice for women facing a similar situation, will be shown publicly for the first time.
Dame Tracey said she hopes schools would visit the show and it would help with discussions about these serious subjects with pupils. She explained: “I expect and know young women and young men will be thinking about what I am saying and advocating about these things. The ‘Me Too’ movement changed a lot about how my work was perceived. Previously people thought I was moaning but I was writing about teenage sex, rape, abuse and abortion, all issues that women and young girls face. The reason I am making work about them is I lived through it and I am out the other side. But lots of people aren’t.”
She added: “My main problem with the Epstein stuff is people will think it is ‘over there’ and just the rich and powerful. Usually it happens with people you know, and it doesn’t matter if they are rich or white or black, it is happening everywhere all the time. Child abuse has always been happening.”
The artist has also been credited with helping to change her home town of Margate where she now lives and runs an art studio for students and up-and-coming artists, offering them cheap rent and a place to thrive. The town has previously seen attempts by Nigel Farage to become it’s MP including in the 2015 General Election. And Dame Tracey is clear she is against Reform and does not want them in her town.
She said: “I’ll tell you what I know about immigration, my dad is Turkish-cypriot, my grandfather was black. My dad came to here on a £10 ticket by sea to London.
“No one perceives me as an immigrant because my name is Tracey. My name is Tracey Karima Emin. It doesn’t sound like a working class white name does it? Because it is not and on my mum’s side there is gypsies. I am the epitome of what everything British is, my background is a mix of everything, a bit of this, a bit of that, and I am proud of it.
“But what I don’t love is jingoistic, racist, bigoted behaviour that divides our country. Twice Farage has tried to get into Margate and it was a joke. He didn’t get in because there are people there who are a lot more intelligent than people imagine. It’s tough in Margate, 18,000 people are living below the poverty line, but art is making it better.”
She told the Guardian earlier this month she would be devastated to see Farage ever become PM.
She said: “If the far right gets in in this country, we are doomed. And everybody has to understand the significance of it. When friends say they’re not voting Labour because of what’s happened in the last two years, I say, ‘Then vote Tory, vote anything, vote Green, but don’t let Reform get in.’”
She added: “The immigration from asylum seekers in this country is minuscule, minor. Britain could take care of people wanting to come here, people could be processed and people could be working … Instead, we’ve got a country now that’s bordering on neo-Nazi rhetoric, which I find really abhorrent.”
* Tracey Emin: A Second Life launches at the Tate Modern on Friday and runs until August 31.
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