Tracey Emin’s exhibition: Tate Modern to present the artist’s largest-ever retrospective

London will host a landmark Tracey Emin exhibition, the most comprehensive survey of her career to date. Titled Tracey Emin: A Second Life, the show opens at Tate Modern on February 26th, 2026 and runs until August 31st, 2026. Supported in partnership with Gucci, the exhibition spans over four decades of the artist’s groundbreaking practice, bringing together more than 90 works across painting, sculpture, video, textiles, neon, and installation.

Emin, one of the most influential figures in contemporary British art, has long been celebrated for her unapologetic self-expression and confessional style. This retrospective underscores her use of the female body as both subject and symbol—exploring themes of passion, trauma, and survival.

Tracey Emin exhibition in London: what to expect

Visitors to the Tracey Emin exhibition in London will encounter defining works from the 1990s alongside recent creations never before seen by the public. Among the highlights are Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996), in which the artist locked herself in a Stockholm gallery for three weeks in an attempt to reconcile with painting, and the iconic My Bed (1998), her Turner Prize–nominated installation that exposed intimate details of her breakdown and recovery.

The exhibition also reflects Emin’s lifelong ties to her hometown of Margate. Early works such as the six-minute video Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995) revisit her adolescence with raw honesty, while the textile piece Mad Tracey From Margate: Everybody’s Been There (1997) layers stitched fragments of thought and memory. Later works, like the wooden sculpture It’s Not the Way I Want to Die (2005), draw inspiration from the seaside town’s Dreamland amusement park, translating childhood nostalgia into darker reflections on mortality.

Tracey Emin Tate Modern: A Second Life

At the heart of the Tracey Emin Tate Modern show is the artist’s exploration of illness, resilience, and transformation. Recent works confront her battle with cancer and the physical realities of living with surgery. The bronze sculpture Ascension (2024) embodies her redefined relationship with her body, while stills from a forthcoming documentary—premiering at Tate—offer an unflinching look at her daily reality.

The exhibition culminates with expansive new paintings, where Emin’s brushwork channels both heartbreak and transcendence, marking what she calls her “second life.” Outside Tate Modern, her monumental bronze I Followed You Until the End (2023) will stand as a public testament to her enduring presence in contemporary art.

A collaboration with Gucci

Presented in the Eyal Ofer Galleries, Tracey Emin: A Second Life is realized with the support of Gucci, alongside Tate Members and the Tracey Emin Exhibition Supporters Circle. The partnership underscores the shared commitment between fashion and art to champion bold voices and transformative creativity.