A man and woman are depicted having sex on the huge white canvas: their bodies outlined in blood-red lines, faces barely there, legs wrapped over and into each other like a chain puzzle. Above the couple, and merging with them, are the words: “You keep fucking me,” repeated 12 times in horizontal lines. Look at it vertically and at one point it becomes: “You keep fucking you.”
It could only be painted by Tracey Emin – the scratchy primitivism, the intensity of the act, the words. Words have always been important to Emin. The painting is a celebration of carnality, a howl of emotional abuse and a nod to narcissism. It sums up Emin’s work perfectly.
You Keep Fucking Me is one of the highlights of a new exhibition of her paintings, all of them created since her diagnosis with a cancer that should, by rights, have seen her off. Emin says that only 33% of people survive the squamous cell bladder cancer five years after diagnosis. She is in her fourth year – and in remission. It’s slowed her down in many ways (she is often exhausted), but she is more prolific than ever, determined to paint and live like never before.
The exhibition is called By the time you see me there will be nothing left. It’s a reference to the cancer – there could be nothing left because she has had so many parts cut out to keep her alive, or she may be dead.
“I’ve had my urethra removed, a full hysterectomy, lymph nodes, part of my bowel, bladder, urinary tract and half my vagina removed. Seven and a half hours! My surgeon said: ‘It doesn’t get much bigger than that! Hehehe!’ She chortles at her achievement. “Whatever. It’s cool! I got through it.”
We meet at the Xavier Hufkens in Brussels – a gorgeous white snowscape of a gallery. Emin looks older and frailer these days. When she emerged in the mid-1990s as one of Charles Saatchi’s YBAs (Young British Artists), she was blazing with sexuality, style and attitude. Tracey from Margate, who left school at 13, seemed to be flashing a joyous V-sign at the ossified art establishment. In a way, she was. But, as so often, it was more complicated than that.
Emin, 60, is wearing a T-shirt that says “The Time Is Always Now”, from a recent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. “For someone like me who spends a hell of a lot of time thinking about the past and hoping for the future, I do spend more time now than I ever have in the present. And it does actually make you happy.” Has it taken till now to get there? “It took a massive bout of near-death cancer to make me realise how good time is now. The present. Cancer changed everything for me.”
Emin no longer drinks or smokes. She blames the smoking for her cancer and wishes she had stopped drinking decades ago. “When you think you’ve got six months to live, you really don’t want to have a hangover or forget what happened the night before. You need every single moment. You want to be aware and heightened – touch, feel, smell, memory, everything. So the idea of drinking didn’t seem a good idea – and then I stuck to it.”
Was drinking a way of finding clarity or obliterating the world? “The alcohol was a big cloud to stop people getting to me, or me getting to them, or me touching life. Now, I look back on it, it’s like the way I used to chain-smoke 50 cigarettes a day. I had a big cloud of smoke around me.” She is astonished by the lucidity with which she now sees things. “It’s not just like I’m a better person because I don’t drink. It’s not as boring as that. Every bit of me feels better. It’s like being born again.” She stops and says that would make her friend the journalist Lynn Barber puke, but it’s true. “Like having a second chance. And I haven’t fucked up yet.”
Cancer brought home another reality, she says. She had turned into somebody she didn’t like. “You know how you have these different phases in your life? It’s only after that you see them clearly. Well, when I was young, I was eager and hungry and excited and learning at art school. And then there was this middle bit where I was just this complete twat. The lowest of the low.” She is referring to a period in her late 30s and 40s. “If you’re reading this really good novel, there’s always a bit where they go into the cave and it’s really dark. My cave was like a giant fucking pothole that went underneath the earth.”
How did she become “a twat”? “All the celebrity stuff, the sparkly bits of fame. Red carpet. Hair. Eyeshadow. You name it. Shoes I can’t walk in. How I conducted my life on a day-to-day level. And also how unhappy I was on a day-to-day level and didn’t do anything about it.”
She says her mother, who died in 2016 and whom she adored, noticed the change. “My mum said I’d become a snob. I said: ‘I’m not a snob. It’s hard for me to be a snob!’” After all, she is the working-class girl from Kent who was patronised by the art establishment from the off. “But, looking back, I know what she was saying. Maybe it was because I wanted to live differently from where I’d come from. I wanted to be someone else from somewhere else. I didn’t want to be this person who suffered so much when I was little, who had this fucked-up upbringing and poverty. I wanted to throw it all behind me so it didn’t exist, like: ‘I’m all right now.’”
How had she become snobbish? “I think Mum meant I forgot where I came from.” Did she become flash? “A bit flash, maybe.” She stops. “Not just flash.” There is a long pause. “Not as kind as I should have been.” Had you been kind before? “Yes. And then there’s this bit that became a bit nasty. A spikiness. I think, now, it’s gone full circle. What’s also gone full circle is going back to Margate.” She moved back to her home town in 2021. “I love it more than I could ever, ever imagine. I feel so good. I’m in the right place, I’m walking in the right streets.”
Before she moved back, Emin still mined Margate in her work, but she was calling on the ghosts of memories and not the real thing. She also realised she had lost her chief source of inspiration – her chippiness. “I had millions of chips. And suddenly the chips start falling off and you’re much more breezy, walking through everything, and of course you’re not yourself.” She had become a chipless member of the establishment with a CBE, an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art and pots of money – and she was miserable as sin.
It was cancer that made her reassess everything. “I was in intensive care and waiting for the prognosis – whether I was going to live or not. I had four days to wait and I thought: if I get through this, if, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, I’m not going to do this and that. And the biggest thing was I didn’t want to die being some mediocre YBA artist from the 90s. I thought: that’s not me. What have I been doing?” Now, Emin believes, she has started to make her mark.
Emin became known soon after Saatchi bought her work Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 (also known as The Tent) for a reported £40,000 in 1997. Saatchi included it in his seminal 90s exhibition Sensation, alongside the work of contemporaries such as Sarah Lucas (with whom she opened an art shop called The Shop), Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, Gary Hume, Marc Quinn and the Chapman brothers. All the YBAs were radical in their own way (Lucas for conceptualising fried-egg breasts; Whiteread for sculpting the space inside objects; Hirst for his cows in formaldehyde; the Chapman brothers for attaching penises to everything; and Hume for daring to paint figurative pictures, even if they were in Dulux).
Emin was 33, although she looked and often sounded far younger. She soon became known for falling out of cabs and into parties, glass in one hand, fag in the other. The first time many of us came across her was on a late night Channel 4 show Is Painting Dead?, alongside a group of crusty, snotty art critics (nearly all of them male). She was slurring her words, obviously drunk, and she said so. Most of the critics, notably Roger Scruton, treated her and her work with contempt. Eventually, she swore rather sweetly, said she had had enough and stumbled off the set.
She believes the way she was treated that night was unacceptable. “They have it on record, me saying: ‘I’ve been drinking, I can’t do this,’ and someone saying: ‘Give her a cup of coffee, she’ll be OK,’ and then making me sign a release form when I was drunk.” Today, she says, the producers would never be allowed to do that. “They’d be sued. It was what it was, but suddenly to be launched into the world with Oliver Reed as ‘one of the most drunk moments on television in the 20th century’ wasn’t really what I wanted to be known for.”
Did it go on to define you? “Yeah, a bit!” She smiles, and when she does she looks like the Emin of old – mischievous, challenging, fun. From then on, Emin became fixed in many minds as the drunken chancer who boasted about her promiscuity and called it art. The reality couldn’t have been more different. “I was making work about abortion, rape, teenage sex, abuse and poverty, but it was dismissed by a lot of people as being attention-seeking or moaning. Moaning!”
Perhaps the very seriousness of her work is what distinguished her from some of her British contemporaries. There was no irony, no satire; it was all from the heart. Could the critics see that? “No. I think the consensus about me 30 years ago was that I was loud, brash, ladettish and common.” And were you? “No. I was feisty and sexy and vivacious, which I’m not now, but essentially I was the same Tracey.”
She says it was partly her fault that few people made a case for her work. She couldn’t have been a worse advocate for herself. Yes, she had left school at 13 without qualifications, but by 20 she was studying for a print-making degree and emerged with a first before getting a master’s in painting – achievements that seem all the more admirable because of her early struggles.
When she talked to the media, she says, she was “blase” about her work. She could have talked eloquently about autobiographical art and the influences of Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch (over the past decade, there have been exhibitions in which her work has been hung alongside both artists) or Frida Kahlo and Louise Bourgeois. “This goes back to being a twat, right? Why should anyone respect me when it didn’t appear that I respected myself? I should have explained the context of where my work fitted within art. But I never did that. I wouldn’t talk about anything in art that mattered or that would matter to an art person. I would always be coasting on life or what had just happened to me.”
Of all the YBAs, Emin was given the hardest time – a tent stitched with the names of all the people she had slept with, art? But The Tent was so poignant – as well as lovers such as the artist Billy Childish and the curator Carl Freedman, the names included family, friends, her aborted twins and abusers. “It wasn’t about sex at all. It was like carving out tombstones, writing those names and remembering all those people. People go into The Tent thinking they’re going to see who I slept with, but come out thinking about who they’ve slept with, who they’ve been intimate with, who they’ve loved, who’s hurt them, who abused them, who raped them. It was like a filter for other people to go through.” In 2004, The Tent was destroyed in a fire. “So it never had a chance to exist within a historic context. It just went.”
The Tent was an attempt to make sense of her past and draw a line under it, she says. “I felt so scummy and so slutty when I was young, and I was trying to work out why. Then I was amazed that I’d had sex with so few people. I thought: ‘Is that all?!’”
At the same time as The Tent, she made a wonderful documentary about her teenage years in Margate, called Why I never became a dancer. (She was a fabulous dancer, as we see in the film.) Again, it was dismissed as exhibitionism. But, among other things, it is about being slut-shamed by her peers. “Some respected art people – women, actually – saw that film recently and said: ‘Oh God, we had no idea it was about that.’ I said: ‘That’s because you weren’t listening to what I was saying. It was about being humiliated and vilified.’”
Three years after The Tent came My Bed, which was bought by Saatchi for £150,000 and sold in 2014 for £2.2m. Detractors dismissed it as another brazen slop of self-publicity. But what Emin showed in the used condoms, bloodied sheets and general chaos was the desperation of a woman on the verge of giving up. She was suicidal when she created My Bed. Originally, it had a noose, but she removed it.
Emin says her new exhibition is about love, as so much of her work has been. Love in all its forms – erotic, ecstatic, desperate, obsessive, spiritual, solitary, unrequited. “It’s the best show I have ever done,” she says.
For much of her adult life, Emin has been single, but I had heard that recently she fell in love again. Yes, she says, but now it’s over. “I had a relationship for nearly four years. A real love affair. It was amazing, because I’d been on my own for 10 years. Him holding me made me want to live, because I was loved and wanted. I didn’t want to die. Then boof, it was over! But it’s OK.” She has dealt with plenty worse, she says. “I’m not in pain, I’m not broken-hearted. I’m getting over cancer and things are good.”
Has she had relationships only with men or does she like women, too? “I’ve liked cats, mainly.” That cute, crooked smile again. “I haven’t had a sexual preference ever in my life,” she says. “My upbringing was so open … I was never brought up to be pigeonholed. You know like when you have to out yourself to your parents? With me, it was the other way around, because they would have been so happy if I’d have been a lesbian.” Was bisexual not good enough for them? “No. I think the true word is ‘demisexual’.” She gives me a look that guards against pretension. “Yes, I know! But I don’t think any of us back in 1979 would have known what demi anything was.”
Has there been enough love in your life? “No. I went to two fortune-tellers in America, one in Los Angeles 15 years ago, one in New York 10 years ago. Neither of them knew who I was. Both of them said my mum had been cursed. Separately. They said the curse was that her daughter will never find love.” Do you think that has been true? “Yes, in a way. But you can’t live without love. You can’t. It’s impossible.”
I ask whether her relationship with her body has changed since surgery. “I hate it,” she says. “I wish I was fit, 30, riding my bike around London, staying up all night, swimming a kilometre a day. I still swim in the sea and I love it. It’s one of my favourite things.”
Do you really hate your body? “I’m pleased that it’s here.” She says she is impressed by its resilience. “I knew I had a strong pain threshold, but I didn’t know my body was so tough. I had septicaemia a year and a half ago and my body went into shutdown and I got through it. Then, in Thailand, I had an obstruction in my bowel caused by pressure of flying and diet. If I’d got on a plane to fly home to London, I probably would have died. Since then, I have had to be on a low-residue diet.”
What does that comprise? “Basically 1970s children’s food.” She is tucking into a pain au chocolat as we talk. “No fruit, no vegetables, no nuts, no seeds, no grains, no pulses, no beans. I can eat chicken, fish and eggs. A lot of white stuff. Bread. This. Anything with butter and sugar and avocado. Ready Brek.”
She now has a stoma (an opening in her abdomen) and relies on a urostomy bag to collect her urine.
“It’s a massive disability,” she says. “There’s lots of things you can’t do any more. If I hadn’t had the bag, I think I would have got over the cancer a hell of a lot quicker.” Another pause. “But then if I hadn’t had the bag, maybe I wouldn’t have been here.”
Emin asks if we can take a short break. “I’ve got to plug my thing in, otherwise I’ll have to keep going to the loo every 10 minutes.” She walks out. A moment later, I hear her panicked voice. ‘Ooh, no. Oh dear. Oh God. Oh dear. I’ve had a complete disaster.’” Do you need help, I ask. “I better get a cloth.” A minute later, she is back, and laughing. There is a little puddle by the door. “That’s because it was too full.”
She makes a call and Harry, who has worked with her for 15 years “and is in charge of everything”, enters the room.
Harry: “What happened?”
Emin: “You’ve just trod in it.”
Harry: “Ah. You?”
Emin: “Yes, me.”
Harry: “Bag?”
Emin, grinning: “Yes.”
Harry: “OK, I’ll send for someone.”
She explains how it all works. First, there is the bag attached to her tummy – the one that just leaked. From a large tote bag sat beside her, she takes out a Victoria Beckham makeup bag, which contains her urostomy night bag, which plugs into the bag on the stoma. Does Beckham know that you use her bag for your wee? She laughs. “No, but I think she’d like it.”
The thing is, she says, if she had not been open about her stoma, it would have been impossible to live how she wants to. “Lots of people don’t want anyone to know they’ve got a bag. But I made my mind up from the beginning, I’ve got to get on with my life, so this is what I’ve got to do. Otherwise, we’re going to be talking and every 15 minutes I’m going to be getting up and going to the loo. And you’re going to think that that’s odd.”
Have other people with stomas told you they appreciate your openness? “Yes, tons of people. Also, when you’ve got a urostomy, you go like this to people …” She pats her stoma, as if giving a Masonic sign, and smiles in solidarity. “Lots of people do it when they see me and it means they’ve got one, too. The more people who are out about it, the easier it is for us all.”
Where were we, she asks? Without skipping a beat, she is back to love. “When I feel low, I think about my friends I’ve had for 35 years, such as David Dawson and Carl Freedman. Carl persuaded me to come back to Margate and we bought the old printing press in 2017 and split it – his became a gallery, mine became my studio. That is a testament to love and trust and security. I’m so lucky that I have people in my life who are solid with me.”
Her cat Teacup appears in one of the paintings in the Brussels exhibition – on the bed beside Emin. Beds are a leitmotif in her work. In one of her new paintings, she lies sleeping as the grim reaper hovers over her with his scythe. Beds also have a practical purpose, she says. “Within painting you need a structure to get you going, so the bed’s shape gives it a structure immediately.”
Is the bed a more profound motif for women than men? “Why?” she asks. Erm, I say, realising how stupid the question is, but blundering on regardless. As a symbol of childbirth? “Anything else I’m not involved in? Hahaha!” Years ago, I imagine she might have ripped into anybody making such a comment, but not today. Did you ever want children? “If I’d met someone who loved me enough, who wanted me enough for ever and persuaded me that was the deal, then maybe. But I never did.” Would you have needed a father? “Yes, because my mum was a single mum and I saw how she suffered. I never wanted that for myself.”
Emin is so outre in some ways, so conventional in others. In 2010, she voted for the Conservatives, did so again in 2015, and since then has come to be regarded as a Tory cheerleader for the arts. I ask how her Conservatism expresses itself in her art. For the first time, she verges on the defensive. “I have voted Tory twice in my life. Both times were for Cameron. Before that, I voted Labour all my life. Since then, I’ve voted for the Animal Welfare party. This time round, I’m going Labour.”
As for the Tories in power, she has nothing but contempt for them. “Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak should feel absolutely ashamed of how they dealt with Covid, what they put the country through and how disrespectful they’ve been to working people.” She sounds like an on-message Labour MP when she talks like this. “All those people who live below the poverty line who voted for Boris Johnson – are they insane?”
She says that if she were growing up today, she would never have a chance to make it, because higher education would be inaccessible to her. As a student, she got a grant. “That’s why I opened an art school in Margate.” It’s a great project – Emin provides 10 artists’ residencies. How much does it cost you? “I don’t know.” Roughly? “OK, I do know, but I don’t like talking about money.”
In a recent interview in the Times, it was suggested that Emin “owned half of Margate”. That may be an exaggeration, but she is certainly doing very nicely in the property market. “I’m providing homes at an affordable rent for creative people. The rent money goes into my foundation. I started sorting my affairs when I thought I was going to die. I’m going to leave virtually everything I’ve ever got to my charity when I die.” In 2021, she bought a Georgian mansion in Fitzrovia from Griff Rhys Jones for £15m. She spends most of her time in Margate and visits London about once a month for hospital appointments, to see shows and enjoy her luxury home.
Emin puts her financial success down to one thing. “I never did coke and that’s how I got my first mortgage. I’ve always saved. I’ve never wasted money, believe it or not.” Does she regard her art school as a lefty commune or a can-do capitalist enterprise? “If I was to put it on a political spectrum, I’d say it was like those old-fashioned philanthropic things: ‘She’s done well. Now, it’s time to give back.’ That kind of thing.”
So many people in the art world make grand pronouncements about their beliefs, she says, yet do nothing to help others.
“I would like all the armchair socialists to get up and do what they say they believe in.” Names, please? “No names. But I know lots of people who have admirable views on life and they don’t actually do anything.”
We have been talking for almost two hours. Every so often, Harry has popped in to see if she is tired and each time she has said she is fine. But now she knows he is going to tell her off if she doesn’t rest. As I get up to leave, she gets a second wind and starts to rant about the state of education, the NHS, the Post Office, the contaminated blood scandal …
“The Post Office has been destroyed. We had one of the best postal systems in the fucking world. Gone. The first people to have a railway line and trains? Useless. Our health system, supposedly the best in the world, and it turns out how many people have got hepatitis?”
She seems so much younger than when she walked into the room. She is even beginning to look like the Tracey Emin of 30 years ago. I’ve only just noticed how tanned she is. “It’s not fake, it’s from the sun.” But, she says, she has just made a discovery. “I did a DNA test. My dad was Turkish Cypriot, but his dad is from Sudan. From Nubia. Now, it turns out I’m 17% Nubian. That means my dad’s parents were both Nubian.” She sounds as chuffed about this as she does about still being alive. Harry enters for the fourth time and now she really does have to stop.
There is something ecstatic about the way she is devouring life. Again, she talks about her second chance. “I am definitely living every day like my last. Every day. I love and believe in art so much. It’s my passion. It’s what I live for. Imagine you wake up and you can do what you love doing. It’s so brilliant.” Did you take it for granted before? “Yes. I abused it. I didn’t understand what an amazing gift it was.”
Tracey Emin, By the time you see me there will be nothing left, is on at the Xavier Hufkens, St-Georges, Brussels, 24 May-27 July