In February 2026, Tate Modern will open the doors to Tracey Emin: A Second Life, the largest exhibition of the artist’s career to date. Bringing together more than 90 works spanning four decades, this retrospective promises to reframe Emin’s legacy, showing her not only as one of the most provocative voices of the 1990s but also as a painter and innovator of extraordinary depth. For collectors of original works, the exhibition is a reminder of Emin’s continuing importance — and why she remains central to any serious collection of contemporary British art.
Emin rose to prominence in the 1990s as one of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a movement that also included Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume. The YBAs redefined what it meant to be a British artist in a global era: fearless, unapologetic, and unafraid to court controversy. Where Hirst explored mortality through sharks in formaldehyde and cabinets of pills, Emin turned her gaze inward. Her art became a vehicle for lived experience: desire, trauma, survival. Works like Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 and My Bed (1998) remain landmarks in British art history, not because they scandalised, but because they stripped away the distance between life and art.
At Andipa, where we champion Hirst’s work, we understand Emin as the counterpoint: Hirst’s clinical, conceptual approach mirrored by Emin’s visceral, emotional voice. Together, their work encapsulates the radical spirit of the YBAs — a movement that collectors continue to pursue with passion.
While the headlines often highlight Emin’s installations and textile pieces, her practice has always extended far beyond these iconic works. As collectors know, the true breadth of her art lies in her drawings, monoprints, and paintings — works that reveal the artist at her most direct. Emin’s drawings, often created in rapid, gestural lines, carry the intensity of confession. Her monoprints, filled with handwritten text, preserve her stream of consciousness with raw intimacy. And in recent years, her paintings have emerged as the most powerful dimension of her career. These canvases — often large, expressive and sombre — reflect not just personal experience but also universal themes of love, loss and survival. Original works by Emin are more than autobiographical fragments. They are touchstones in the ongoing story of British art, sitting naturally alongside the paintings of Francis Bacon, the drawings of Giacometti, and the canvases of Hockney — artists that Andipa proudly places with collectors worldwide.
The title of the upcoming Tate exhibition, A Second Life, is more than symbolic. In 2020, Emin survived a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. The experience transformed her art, bringing new urgency and reflection to her work. Where her early pieces captured the turbulence of youth, her recent paintings address mortality, resilience and the fragility of existence. For collectors, this shift is significant. Emin’s art now speaks not only of provocation but of survival, offering a narrative arc that few living artists can match. Her original works from this period, in particular, represent an artist at the height of her powers, reflecting on a lifetime of making.
At Andipa Gallery, we guide our clients towards works of substance — pieces that not only hold financial value but also embody cultural importance. Emin’s original works meet both measures. Her place in the history of the YBAs ensures her relevance to any serious collection of late 20th- and early 21st-century art. Just as we champion Damien Hirst’s original works for their innovation and impact, so too we recognise Emin as a figure whose art has redefined honesty in contemporary practice. For collectors who already hold Bacon, Warhol or Hirst, Emin’s work adds a crucial voice. She completes the conversation between artists who confronted life’s most difficult truths through radically different means — Bacon with distortion and violence, Warhol with repetition and consumer imagery, Hirst with clinical mortality, and Emin with raw autobiography.
When Tracey Emin: A Second Life opens at Tate Modern in February 2026, it will not only be a celebration of an extraordinary career but also a marker of her place in the canon. The exhibition will revisit the pieces that defined her early reputation while giving space to her most recent, painterly works. For collectors, this retrospective offers both validation and opportunity: validation of Emin’s enduring relevance and opportunity to engage with her career at a moment of renewed focus. As with Hirst, whose early works continue to resonate decades later, Emin’s originals promise to hold their place in the long arc of art history.
Tracey Emin’s career has always been about honesty — sometimes shocking, often vulnerable, always uncompromising. Her art has grown from scandalous confessions to profound meditations on survival, and in 2026, Tate Modern will honour that journey with the most ambitious exhibition of her life. For collectors guided by Andipa, Emin’s original works matter not only because of their market strength but because they embody the very essence of what contemporary art should be: personal yet universal, intimate yet monumental. As A Second Life approaches, we are reminded that Tracey Emin is not simply a voice of the past, but a vital, living artist whose work continues to shape the conversation today.
If you are considering consigning Tracey Emin artworks to Andipa, please contact us at enquiries@andipa.com or call +44 (0)207 589 2371. We look forward to hearing from you and welcoming you to Andipa.
