Royal Academician Tracey Emin is renowned for her autobiographical practice which spans a range of media including painting, printmaking, embroidery, installation, film and sculpture. Raw and honest, her work often incorporates hand-written text that discloses her innermost emotions, regrets, passions, and dreams.

Emin’s drawings and paintings are characterised by an expressive, gestural style which communicates both an immediacy and a vulnerability. Her sculptural work has a similar quality albeit executed using different techniques. In this tiny sculpture we can see the artist’s fingerprints on the surface of the bronze female figure, which merges with the bird that is seemingly rescuing her. As with many of Emin’s works, the title is passionately declarative; symbolic of a yearning for security, and a desire to feel loved. 

Emin has exhibited extensively all over the world including recent solo exhibitions at Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2019); Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France (2017); Leopold Museum, Vienna (2015) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2013). In 2007 Emin represented Great Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale and her work is held in many notable public and private collections. In 2011, Emin was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in 2012 she was made a CBE.  

In November 2020, she will open a major solo exhibition at the Academy entitled The Loneliness of the Soul, which will tour to the new Munch Museum, Oslo in spring 2021. Emin lives in London and the South of France.