We all live a few lives, some more extreme than others. Iconic British artist (Dame) Tracey Emin has somehow managed extreme phases throughout her life. Tracey Emin: A Second Life is a new show at London’s Tate Modern which examines a hundred pieces of her work in the context of her unique, remarkable yet relatable, life over the past forty years.

The sixty-two-year-old Emin remains one of the highest profile former YBAs (Young British Artists) a ground-breaking group of artists who emerged in London in the late 1980s and early 90s. Famous for her unapologetic self-expression, Emin is best known for using the female body – her own – to explore passion, pain and healing from a personal perspective.

Growing up in the raffish English seaside town of Margate, she experienced early adolescent sexual abuse and rape, dodged school and drank too much before finding herself in printmaking and eventually art, graduating in 1989 from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Painting. Her early pain, abuse, abortion and sexual experiences featured heavily in her work from the beginning. 1993 saw her first proper show with London’s legendary White Cube gallery and 1995’s seminal piece Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963 – 1995, a tent embroidered with the names of past lovers and others (now sadly destroyed in a fire), helped her rise to fame. This was followed by a drunk TV appearance in 1997 and 1998’s iconic My Bed, a reconstruction of her skanky bed from home, complete with dirty sheets and knickers, empty vodka bottles, the detritus of sex and masturbation, and so on. Both these sealed her notoriety. Elton John, George Michael, Kate Moss, David Bowie, and Madonna all came calling as collectors, pleased with her expansion of the definition of modern art, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Her career ticked along for the next twenty years, including a few years as, by her own admission, a bit of a celebrity twat at times, and also an unfortunate period as a high-profile Tory voter. These paled into insignificance, however, with a 2020 diagnosis of squamous cell cancer, which resulted in a hysterectomy and also the removal of part of her vagina, lymph nodes, part of her bowel, her bladder, and her urethra. The subsequent stoma, constant bleeding, and infections are a big, debilitating feature of her life now, and are prominent in her latest work – the abuse of her vagina reinvented for another era.

Tracey Emin: A Second Life delves deep into her career’s work, beginning with her earliest forays into personal storytelling. A highlight here is the 1995 Why I Never Became A Dancer video of her dancing to Sylvester’s (You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real. In the video, she recounts the horror of her entry into a 1978 disco dancing competition, getting sabotaged by a group of men she had previously had sex with, chanting ‘Slag, Slag, Slag’ at her repeatedly from the edge of the dancefloor until she gives up.

The personal tales continue, through a range of paintings, neon, textiles, embroidery, sculpture, and installation. Emin’s remarkable ability to share without appearing self-centred is consistent across all mediums. My Bed is another highlight, unseen for many years. These days it has a relatively innocent feel to it, a modern-day version by someone naughtier would probably include a meth pipe, syringes, more blood, detritus and shit. It’s still pretty messy, though. Her current health status, however, gives a new dimension to the bed – this could now be the bed of someone really physically unwell. The bed is followed by a daunting selection of photographs of her stoma and its effect on her body.

This neatly ties into her latest work, bigger-than-life, mostly large-scale painting-based, but also bronze sculpture (less remarkable), which focuses on her poor health and the medical assault on her nether regions. The paintings are understandably quite red, violent, and painful-looking, some more striking than others. Emin’s work remains as personal, powerful, and in-yer-face as ever. There is, however, a beautiful, innocent, quite child-like side to her work at times which makes tough content easier to absorb.

This is a well-curated, intimate show, very consistent, an invitation into Emin’s naked body and soul, albeit with few surprises. To be fair, there is probably nothing Emin could say or do to shock us anymore. Raw, brutal, cute – she is all of our lives. These days, she lives back in her hometown of Margate, nurtures young artists there via her foundation, and has been instrumental in Margate’s ongoing urban reinvention. Many of us leave our grim hometowns never to return or give back. For that, she is to be congratulated, as she is for being ahead of her time, shining a light into some of the darkest corners of life – grooming, sexual assault and rape. She’s also an inspiration for carrying on whilst suffering multiple health issues.

As Madonna says, Tracey Emin is the Frida Kahlo of our times. Bravo Tracey! Long may you reign!