The art of surviving oneself: Tracey Emin on display at Palazzo Strozzi

Between neon, painting, and sculpture, the work of the british visual artist, now on display in Florence, does not seek comfort but rather pure existence: a visceral narrative of fragility and resilience, of life and loss.

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Tracey Emin, I Followed You to The End, 2024. “Sex and Solitude”, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2025.

A massive, fragmented bronze sculpture stands in the Renaissance courtyard. At first glance, I Followed You to the End appears as an abstract form, an uneven surface, almost a landscape. Upon closer inspection, a partially visible female body emerges, legs spread, in a posture that challenges the balance between strength and vulnerability. The casting preserves traces of the creative process, with a rough and lived-in texture. Emin subverts the tradition of monumental sculpture, long dominated by erect and dominant male figures, to restore power to fragility. The shadow of Louise Bourgeois lingers in the bronze, in a work that does not celebrate but narrates the weight of existence.

Tracey Emin, Love Poem for CF, 2007. “Sex and Solitude”, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2025.

A neon piece cuts through the dimness of the room, transforming pain into light. Love Poem for CF is a declaration of love and loss, a poem etched in the air in Emin’s unmistakable handwriting. The words, drawn from verses written for her former partner Carl Freedman, vibrate with melancholy: "You put your hand / Over my mouth / But the noise / Still continues." The cold, impalpable light does not warm but exposes, like a reflection of memory that refuses to fade. This is one of Emin’s largest neon works, spanning four and a half meters of raw emotion.

Tracey Emin, Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, 1996. “Sex and Solitude”, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2025.

In 1996, Emin locked herself in a gallery room in Stockholm for three weeks, naked, surrounded only by blank canvases. Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made was a cathartic ritual, a confrontation with creative block and personal pain. After two abortions in the 1990s, she had abandoned painting, unable to face it. Here, through radical isolation, she rediscovered it, allowing each brushstroke to be an act of reconciliation. The audience, separated from her, watched through distorted lenses, silent witnesses to an intimate and visceral process. In the end, what remained was an installation preserving canvases, objects, and traces of her passage – a physical testimony of a moment of transformation.

Tracey Emin, I Do Not Expect, 2022. “Sex and Solitude”, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2025.

A hand-stitched fabric carries words suspended between desire and resignation. I Do Not Expect is an appliqué in which Emin weaves fragments of thoughts on denied motherhood and the relentless passage of time. "I do not expect to be a mother, but I do expect to die alone," she writes, entrusting fabric with a memory that becomes a body of its own. The appliqué technique, traditionally associated with women’s craftwork ("People often ask me what I think about feminism. I always reply that I don’t think about feminism – I am a feminist," she explains), becomes a language of protest and personal affirmation. The irregular stitches, intentionally imperfect, create an aesthetic of vulnerability, rejecting the idea of perfection. The floral or brightly colored fabric contrasts with the emotional weight of the words, creating a tension between the delicacy of the medium and the rawness of the message.

Tracey Emin, My Mum's Ashes - In The Ashes Room, 2020. “Sex and Solitude”, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2025.

In 2020, during the silence imposed by the pandemic, Emin painted in her London home, transforming solitude into a dialogue with absence. My Mum’s Ashes – In The Ashes Room was born from the pain of maternal loss, evoked through an urn that becomes the heart of a space for reflection. The paintings, dominated by cool shades of blue and gray, depict blurred figures, shadows emerging and vanishing. Mourning is not an end but a process of transformation. "I am much more honest with myself now," Emin reflects. "My level of guilt is phenomenal because I look inside myself to understand what I do."

Over the past thirty years, nearly everything has been said about Tracey Emin. That her art is cathartic, confessional, expiatory, autobiographical. That her paintings are intimate, raw, introspective, controversial. Scandal, impropriety, sexual explicitness, and inadequacy have all been shouted about her work, starting with My Bed – the recreation of her bedroom after what we now call "bed rotting" – which earned her a nomination for the Turner Prize in 1999 and officially cemented her place in the art world. Discussions about fragility, vulnerability, and hyper-exposure have followed her throughout her career.

For thirty years, the same words have been used, passed from mouth to mouth. And – in an almost obsessive way, verging on the pornography of pain – every time Emin has been discussed, her rape at the age of 13, the two abortions in the 1990s that affected her so deeply she destroyed all the art she had created until then, and the cancer that nearly killed her four years ago have all been mentioned.

People often ask me what I think about feminism. I always reply that I don’t think about feminism: I am a feminist

Tracey Emin. Photo Ludovica Arcero. Courtesy Say Who International

It seems almost impossible to talk about Emin without addressing all of this. But the reality is that most of what has been said barely scratches the surface of what the artist actually does with her art, with her emotions, with the very experience of existence and the pain intrinsic to it – because pain is inseparable from the act of love, which she calls “a constant pain.”

Tracey Emin, “Sex and Solitude”, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2025. Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2025.

The only way to truly understand Emin is to observe her images (“they are not images, they are feelings,” she has often emphasized) and read her words, letting them resonate with something inside us that has existed before us. And to do so, the exhibition Tracey Emin. “Sex and Solitude” – on display at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence from March 16 to July 20 – is an unmissable opportunity. Below, a small guide to experiencing it fully through five of her most representative works.

Before delving into the works, a note on the title, inspired by a site-specific installation – a neon inscription bearing the same words – that welcomes visitors at the entrance of Palazzo Strozzi. Presenting the exhibition, Emin explains: "Many people in this room, and many people in general, have experienced what sex is and what solitude is: for me, they are intrinsic. When I was younger, sex drove me, made me think, made me act, whereas now that I am older, solitude is fundamental to my art."