I Forgot How Beautiful You Are
By Tracey Emin
Located in Miami, FL
racey Emin, in full Tracey Karima Emin, (born July 3, 1963, Croyden, Greater London, England), British artist noted for using a wide range of media—including drawing, video, and installation art, as well as sculpture and painting—and her own life as the subject of her art. Her works were confessional, provocative, and transgressive, often portraying sexual acts and reproductive organs. Critics were seldom lukewarm in their response to her. Like Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, she was considered one of the YBAs (Young British Artists; also known as the BritArtists) who came to prominence in the 1990s. Emin and her twin brother, Paul, were born to an unwed mother. Their father, who was married to someone other than their mother, was a Turkish Cypriot. Emin grew up in the seaside resort town of Margate. She dropped out of school at age 13 and moved to London at 15. Two years later she attended Medway College of Design (now part of the University for the Creative Arts), Rochester, where she studied fashion. She was accepted without a secondary-school certificate at nearby Maidstone College of Art (also now part of UCA) and earned a fine-arts degree in 1986. Thereafter she obtained a master’s degree in painting (1989) from the Royal College of Art in London. In 1993, in the former London borough of Bethnal Green, Emin and fellow artist Lucas opened a store where they sold their own handmade items. One of Emin’s earliest exhibitions took place in 1993–94 at the influential White Cube gallery on Duke Street (1993–2002). That show, ironically titled “My Major Retrospective,” gave a hint of things to come. It displayed personally significant artifacts from Emin’s life, such as a hospital bracelet and personal correspondence, in addition to a quilt on which she had stitched the names of family members and notes to them. In 1994 Emin undertook a U.S. tour of performance art for which, sitting in her grandmother’s chair...
2010s Sculptures
Neon Light
