Tracey Emin


An artist is a witness compelled to transform personal feelings and concepts into something universal; their life, not only their work, is a symbol of the unknown, out of any control and understanding.

Simona Vendrame: It’s hard to talk to you about your work without discussing your private life because your work is so deeply interconnected with your personal experience. In fact, your work can even be seen as a sort of cathartic walk down memory lane to those personal dramas in your past that seem to want to come back, perhaps to be digested and then reworked. Judging from the interviews you’ve given in the past, it seems that it’s you who wants to tell us everything about your life, even the most intimate details. On the other hand, one can’t avoid the suspicion that instead it might sometimes be the media that indulges in the more salacious details of your life, either to arouse the public’s attention or because they grasp only the most obvious, superficial, literal aspect of your work, instead of digging deeper.

Tracey Emin: That’s certainly true, but that’s the kind of attitude you’d expect from journalists…




Simona Vendrame