Tracey Emin's “Sex And Solitude” Captures A Desire for New Beginnings

“Sex And Solitude” is the biggest International exhibition ever dedicated to Tracey Emin curated by Arturo Galansino, general director at the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation. The  exhibition will be open till the 20th of July and it will be a unique opportunity to see for the first time Emin’s vast body of work and many new pieces ever presented in Italy, spanning from painting, drawing, video, photography, sculpture, and installation as well as embroidery, neon, and bronze. Over 60 works by Emin are presented to create a journey through different moments of her career from the nineties to today, and crossing different moments of her journey as an artist, as a woman, through emotions, taking the viewer in an intense journey which explores the matter of body desire, love and sacrifice.

Tracey Emin at Palazzo Strozzi on the occasion of the exhibition Sex and Solitude. Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, 2025. Photo Ludovica Arcero, Saywho.

Tracey Emin (1963) is a British contemporary artist who rose to fame as part of the Young British Artists (YBAs) in the 1990s, and gained international recognition with pieces like "My Bed". She has always blurred the lines between art and autobiography, and she left an indelible mark on modern art with her fearless honesty and emotional intensity.

Her personal story, as thoroughly summarised at the entrance of the exhibition, shapes and influences massively her artistic production. Emin is known for a direct and raw approach to her art-making process which really contributes to translating very personal experiences onto the canvas creating works that are intimate, intense and impactful. Her works do not focus on the representation of specific events but, as the artist says, they capture the emotion that one might feel and which are universally shared, hoping that the viewer is moved when looking at her works. The desire for love blends with pain and sacrifice and despite the different mediums, dimensions, and shapes; passion, melancholy and solitude emerge predominantly.

The exhibition starts on the outside of Palazzo Strozzi with one of Tracy’s iconic neons with the title of the exhibition “Sex and solitude” which introduces straight away two of Emin’s research themes: body and sexuality on one hand, and solitude and vulnerability on the other. Also in dialogue with the architecture of the Renaissance Palazzo, in the courtyard is installed the monumental sculpture “I followed you to the end”. Interestingly, Emin became friends with Louise Bourgeois and later worked in a foundry in New York where she learned the lost-wax technique and started exploring with small bronze sculptures. She then started working with AB fine Art foundry in London and became fascinated with the history of bronze and its alchemy, which gives her the opportunity to create a natural and spontaneous finish which leaves the sculpture looking organic, intimate and tactile. 

In her works art and life blend and intimate moments become essential to spark a reflection on matters like sexuality, illnesses, motherhood, and relationships. Her honest and autobiographical research focuses on the human figure which in her paintings becomes abstract and on the canvas deep and intense brush strokes give shape to parts and fragments of bodies which are sexually charged, resulting in very expressive paintings which blend figuration and abstraction.

Emin, says that her idea of figuration stems from the relationship and observation she has done on the works of Edward Munch and Egon Shiele which are two of the artists that she loves the most and that inspired her approach to figuration, as well as some of the catholic iconography that she became acquainted with while studying in London and visiting the National Gallery.

The exhibition is not presented as a retrospective of Tracy Emin’s career but as a journey through themes and different moments of her life and artistic practice showing her personal exploration and expression through different mediums which varied depending on the different moments of her life. 

The artist has always championed the reappropriation of the female body, which is traditionally a subject and object of art, by subverting the role of women which traditionally have just been models for artworks and their bodies were painted by men for men. In her works she is no longer a model, she is an active subject of the work and her body, feelings, and experiences are acknowledged. Painting for Emin has its own dimension, closer to the divine and almost inhuman and she also adds that it is for her the main medium of expression and every work in this exhibition evokes emotional tension and strength. Her canvases are vibrant and intense but unstable and unsettling at the same time, evoking a strong passion which is reinforced by the superpositioning of colors and brushstrokes which leave traces of the different stages of her creative process. Love is a key theme in Emin’s body of work and she explores its romantic and painful facet and she does that through the use of language that she turns to both in the title of her works, which are small poems themselves, and in her neon installations. 

Featured in the exhibition are also some of her renowned neon works, which are poems written with her own handwriting where explicit words create a poem which is both a confession and an affirmation, and the result is a work which is intimate, visual, and  emotional.

The exhibition also explores the sense of solitude and isolation which is inherited in human existence and it is delved into through a selection of works that she created during the pandemic and lockdown. She captured a sense of wait and desire for new beginnings and these small works appear very emotionally charged as they embrace solitude and silence as conditions to reflect, imagine and reminisce. In a conversation with Arturo Galansio Emin says that she now believes that solitude is one of the most intense and wonderful feelings as it gives her clarity and a sense of fulfillment. She also makes a distinction between isolation and solitude as the latter pervades her with a  newly found strength. 

The exhibition also expands in the cinema room of Palazzo Gucci in Piazza della Signoria, where a selection of videos of the artist is presented to offer another space to discover her research on this medium which connects word and image as a means to visually reinforce the relationship between art and life.

In conclusion, Sex and Solitude is a must-see exhibition dedicated to a groundbreaking female artist who is an unapologetic force in contemporary art, known for transforming raw emotion and personal experience into provocative works. Tracey Emin’s works are raw, and confessional in their exploration and portrayal of love, loss, identity, and trauma; blurring the line between vulnerability and rebellion, making the intimate universal. Truly, her art isn't just seen, it is felt.

Tracey Emin, Sex and Solitude, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, 2025. Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2025.