Tracey Emin
Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made
Faurschou New York
Through 14 July, 2024
Life Model Goes Mad IV, 1996
Giclee on photo rag paper, 20.9 x 20.5 in
Image courtesy of © Tracey Emin Studio
Life Model Goes Mad XI, 1996
Giclee on photo rag paper, 20.9 x 20.5 in
Image courtesy of © Tracey Emin Studio
”I stopped painting when I was pregnant. The smell of the oil paints and the turps made me feel physically sick, and even after my termination, I couldn't paint. It's like I needed to punish myself by stopping the thing I loved doing the most. I hated my body; I was scared of the dark; I was scared of being asleep. I was suffering from guilt and punishing myself, so I threw myself in a box and gave myself three and a half weeks to sort it out. And I did. My only regret about this project was that I didn't carry on painting from that moment. It took me another five years before I started painting again.” – Tracey Emin
In 1996, British artist TRACEY EMIN (b. 1963) locked herself naked in an enclosed room at a gallery in Stockholm for 3 weeks to reconcile her anxieties and guilt around painting, a medium she had abandoned 6 years prior. After a traumatic period in the early 90s with two abortions, Tracey Emin could not physically stand the thought of painting and wanted to face her troubled relationship with the medium. Through fish-eye lenses in the exterior walls of the room, visitors could follow glimpses of Emin’s process. This exhibition at Faurschou New York marks the first time that this seminal work of art is exhibited in the United States.
Tracey Emin’s performance is not merely to be understood as catharsis, a cleansing self-therapy, but as the staging of an artistic exorcism by Tracey Emin enacting her own life in front of the viewers. Initially, Tracey Emin had intended for the paintings made inside the room to be destroyed in a fire after the performance, but she ultimately decided against it, leaving the space and works as a testimony of the physically and mentally challenging journey she had been through. The entire collection of artworks and objects in the room were preserved as an installation, which are all exhibited here in their original constellation.
Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made
Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023
© Faurschou
Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made
Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023
© Faurschou
Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made
Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023
© Faurschou
Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made
Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023
© Faurschou
Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made
Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023
© Faurschou
The paintings and drawings that Tracey Emin created in the process refer to and appropriate works by male artists Egon Schiele, Yves Klein, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso. Historically, women’s access to the artist’s studio have been as models, not artists. The representation of women has been a male affair, where the female nude stands out as the most distinct example of the objectification of the female body. However, in Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, Tracey Emin positions herself in the double role as both model and artist, challenging the universal acceptance of women as objects of the male gaze. Further, Emin documented the performance in the photographic series The Life Model Goes Mad, in which she takes on the role of the model in her own studio, reclaiming female identity and sexuality.
Tracey Emin is known for her autobiographical and confessional works, with themes of femininity, abortion, and the political and stigmatic structures surrounding them. Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made stands out as a pivotal work and predecessor to a line of works, in which Tracey Emin uses her own life, trauma, and emotions as a means of expression, with the most widely recognized piece being My Bed (1998). After the exhibition in 1996 in Sweden, Tracey Emin once again had to distance herself from painting, but ultimately took it up again. Today, Tracey Emin’s artistic practice and voice to further the recognition of female artists is as vibrant and poignant as ever.
© Tracey Emin Studio
TRACEY EMIN - Biography
Tracey Emin was born in 1963 in London. She currently lives and works between London, the South of France, and Margate, UK.
Tracey Emin has exhibited extensively including major exhibitions at Munchmuseet, Oslo (2021); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2020); Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2019); Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France (2017); Leopold Museum, Vienna (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2013); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2012); Hayward Gallery, London (2011); Kunstmuseum Bern (2009); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2008); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Malaga, Spain (2008); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2003); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002).
In 2007 Tracey Emin represented Great Britain at the 52nd VeniceBiennale and her installation My Bed has been included in ‘In Focus’ displays at Tate Britain with Francis Bacon (2015), Tate Liverpool with William Blake and also at Turner Contemporary, Margate alongside JMW Turner (2017).
In 2011, Tracey Emin was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in 2012 was made Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts.
Tracey Emin’s expressive and visceral art is one of disclosure, dealing with personal experience and heightened states of emotion. Frank and intimate but universal in its relevance, her work draws on the fundamental themes of love, desire, loss and grief, unravelling in the process the nuanced constructs of ‘woman’ and ‘self’ through probing self-exploration. ‘The most beautiful thing is honesty, even if it’s really painful to look at’, she has remarked.
Wide-ranging in scope, Tracey Emin’s practice includes painting, drawing, film, photography, sewn appliqué, sculpture and neon, all of which are transformed into highly personalised mediums for her singular voice. The genres of self-portraiture and the nude run throughout, both intricately bound up with the emotional journey of her life and the travails of her own biography. In her early work, often characterised by unflinching personal revelation, Emin makes reference to her family, childhood, and chaotic teenage years growing up in the seaside town of Margate. Her relationships, pregnancies and abortions are recounted through drawings, photographs, found objects and videos in a manner that is neither tragic nor sentimental and which resonates deeply with the audience.
FAURSCHOU NEW YORK
148 Green Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222
TRACEY EMIN: EXORCISM OF THE LAST PAINTING I EVER MADE
FAURSCHOU NEW YORK, 21 October, 2023 – 14 July, 2024
