For Art Basel Paris, Tracey Emin brings her deeply personal exploration of love, intimacy and the female body to both White Cube’s Paris gallery and the city’s public space. During a preview of the exhibition, a guided tour led by Harry Weller, artistic director of Emin’s studio, offered a closer look at the autobiographical details and recurring motifs behind her work. While paintings and small-scale sculptures unfold through the emotional landscapes of the bedroom, three monumental bronze figures take over the Parvis des Droits de l’Homme on the Trocadéro esplanade, transforming private experiences of vulnerability and endurance into a public encounter.
Tracey Emin, 2023 Photo by Harry Weller.
At White Cube, Emin returns to the reclining nude, a recurring motif through which she explores desire, solitude and emotional unrest. Her spontaneous brushwork gives form to scenes in which the body appears suspended between intimacy and isolation. In I Will Miss You Yesterday – I Will Miss You Today – I Will Miss You Tomorrow – And That’s How It Will Always Be (2025), a figure is almost swallowed by fields of nocturnal blue, while Beauty (2022) presents a more assertive presence against a rose pink background. The paintings draw on the history of the reclining nude while challenging the traditional relationship between the female subject, the viewer and desire. Beds, baths and shadowy interiors become settings for longing, illness, companionship and the complexities of ageing. As Weller explained during the tour, Emin’s bedroom has long been central to both her life and her practice. Following surgery and six months spent recovering in bed, the space became so integral to her work that the studio team nicknamed it her “office bed office”. The bed carries multiple meanings, from physical intimacy to the profound loneliness of wanting to be held.
Weller also drew attention to details that might otherwise go unnoticed. Emin’s cats, for instance, are more than familiar companions appearing throughout her work. Against the recurring theme of longing and the desire to be loved, they represent a form of affection that feels dependable and unconditional. As Weller put it, “They’re her companions, they’re a love that’s safe.” Egyptian imagery, meanwhile, reflects Emin’s longstanding fascination with ancient Egypt, while the patterned surfaces beneath the small bronze figures echo the rugs and intricate motifs woven into her paintings. Other works reveal an even more intimate dimension of her practice. Emin’s stoma and urostomy bag, visible in certain paintings, are incorporated into her figures without being concealed or sentimentalized. For Weller, this refusal to edit her lived experience is part of what makes her work so powerful. The artist’s physical reality is present alongside desire, pain and pleasure, without being allowed to define the entirety of her identity. Her paintings remain fluid and instinctive, often changing direction within minutes as an image shifts from a moment of intimacy into one of isolation or unease.
Tracey Emin – I Followed You to the End – 2024
Outside, three monumental bronze sculptures extend these concerns into the public realm. Presented by White Cube, Art Basel Paris and the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, I Lay Here for You (2018), I Followed You to the End (2024) and I Will Not Be Alone (2025) trace a progression through three bodily positions: prone, kneeling and seated. Together, the figures suggest a passage from surrender towards resilience, giving physical form to the capacity to endure and transform. Their patterned bronze bases connect them visually to the intimate world of the gallery, carrying Emin’s distinctive language of mark-making into the monumental scale of the city. Weller revealed that Emin was deeply moved to see her sculptures installed at the Trocadéro, with the Eiffel Tower forming the backdrop. After years devoted to developing her practice in bronze, the public presentation represents a significant moment in her artistic journey.
Emin’s relationship with monumental sculpture also has a personal history. Following her mother’s death in 2016, she took a sabbatical from exhibitions, press and other commitments, setting herself the goal of scaling up her bronze work and competing on an entirely different level. As Harry Weller explained during the guided tour, Emin had befriended Louise Bourgeois towards the end of the latter’s life. Bourgeois introduced her to the lost wax method of bronze casting, while also inspiring her through her ambition as a woman artist working on a monumental scale. Beginning with small figurines, Emin gradually expanded her practice, eventually creating large-scale works such as The Mother (2022), the nine-metre sculpture overlooking the sea from Inger Munch’s pier in Oslo. For Weller, this evolution represents Emin’s determination to establish herself as a major sculptor in her own right.
Freely accessible from 14 October to 1 November, the installation is the first Art Basel Paris Public Program project to take place at the Parvis des Droits de l’Homme. Across the gallery and the esplanade, Emin creates a dialogue between private emotion and collective experience, reminding us that vulnerability is not the opposite of strength, but often where resilience begins.
Tracey Emin – I lay here for you – 2018
Tracey Emin – I want your warmth – 2025
Tracey Emin – I will miss you Yesterday – I will miss you Today – I will miss you Tomorrow – And that’s how it will always be 2025
Tracey Emin – I Will Not Be Alone – 2025
Tracey Emin – More Comfort – 2025
Tracey Emin – YES MORE – 2025
Tracey Emin
I will miss you Yesterday
I will miss you Today
I will miss you Tomorrow
And that’s how it will Always be
20 October – 18 December 2026 at White Cube Paris
10 avenue Matignon
75008 Paris
