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In my Mind II, 2014

Etching on wove paper
Signed by the artist in pencil, lower right on recto

36.5 × 29.5 cm – Sheet

Edition of 100

Tracey Emin’s art functions as a visual journal, offering unfiltered reflections of her life experiences and inner thoughts. She consistently serves an intensely personal narrative, challenging viewer expectations and cultural norms. Emin approaches her work with unflinching honesty, creating disarmingly emotional and reflective pieces. Through her practice, she probes the construct of self and the impulse to create, often using her experiences as primary material.

Her distinctive drawing technique employs soft, scattered lines that capture immediate emotional states rather than studied representations. Emin deliberately maintains a certain roughness in her work, stating that they lose their authenticity when drawings become too neat. Her nudes, often self-portraits, are artistic documentation of life’s passages, addressing time, age, and solitude themes. Through her fierce energy and abandoned gestures, Emin creates works that fluctuate between joy and suffering, marking her significant contribution to contemporary art.

Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin is an English contemporary artist who was born in 1963. She works across a variety of mediums such as needlework, painting, sculptures, video, photography, drawing and installation. The content of Emin’s work often reflects elements of the expressive and confessional and her installations are bold and profound, as she is unafraid to depict aspects of her own life to form her compositions. At the Royal Academy of Arts, Emin offers advice and talks to developing artists in her position as Professor of Drawing. She is sometimes considered in relation to the Stuckism group, which was founded by her previous partner, Billy Childish, after suggesting that Emin was stuck in the past.