Tracey Emin.

Tracey Emin came to prominence as one of the loose grouping of contemporary artists often referred to as YBAs (Young British Artists). This group of artists, also including Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Angus Fairhurst, often collaborated and exhibited together. Second only to Damien Hirst in terms of notoriety among the general public, Emin’s work is explicitly feminist, though taking inspiration from expressionist painters such as Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele; after presenting Madonna with the UK Music Hall of Fame Award in 2004, Madonna described Emin as ‘intelligent and wounded and not afraid to expose herself. She is provocative but she has something to say’ and this is definitely evident in her work.

Emin was born in London but brought up in Margate, and today she lives and works in London and France. Emin studied at the Royal of College of Art where she was initially influenced by the expressionists, though later destroyed her work from this early period.

In 1994 she had her first solo show at the White Cube gallery, one of the most significant galleries in London. It was called My Major Retrospective, and was typically autobiographical, consisting of personal photographs, and photos of her now destroyed early paintings as well as items which most artists would not consider showing in public, such as a packet of cigarettes her uncle was holding when decaptiated in a car crash. This willingness to show details of what would generally be thought of as her private life has become one of Emin's trademarks.

Two years later, in 1999, Emin was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and exhibited My Bed at the Tate Gallery. This consisted of her own unmade bed, with sheets thrown back, used condoms and period-blood stained underwear. One of her best known works, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95, is a tent with the names of everyone she has slept with sewn onto it. These include sexual partners, but also relatives she slept with as a child, her twin brother, and her two aborted children. Although often talked about as a shameless exhibition of her sexual conquests, it is rather a piece about intimacy in a more general sense. The needlework central to this work has been used by Emin in a number of her other pieces. Another autobiographical work is the film CV Cunt Vernacular (1997). This is essentially a biography, with Emin narrating her story from her childhood in Margate, through her student years, her abortions and destruction of her early works, as well as her later, more successful, work.

Emin continues to be active in her art practice, and the basis of her work remains tied to physical identity through corporeal and spiritual anguish. She is an active participant in her artwork, and through this she lends an openness and vulnerability to her audience through universal emotion. She rejects discussion of the feminist authority in her work, and yet she engages directly with modern female identity. Art allows the violation of social norms, and in turn a way for viewers to enter into sharing the human social condition - often in a controlled environment.