Tracey Emin — By the time you see me there will be nothing left

Tracey Emin, By the time you see me there will be nothing left, Xavier Hufkens, 2024

The paintings Tracey Emin made after a serious illness, shown in Brussels in 2024.

Xavier Hufkens showed nearly fifty new works from 24 May to 27 July 2024, paintings and works on paper, some small and some monumental. All of them date from 2023 on.

They are about love, past, present and future, held up against mortality. Figures lie in beds and on tables. Four self portraits stand upright: This is Me, Always A Mirror, You could drink me and I Felt So Much Older.

Water keeps coming back, as fear and as renewal, in I Kept Drowning and I wanted to be clean. The Nightmare answers Fuseli, and Munch is close by. Other titles read like lines from a diary: Why Should Love Keep Hurting, I watched Myself die and come alive, Please Keep Loving me.

The critic Hettie Judah, who writes for the Guardian, Frieze and Apollo, wrote the essay.

Two years later Tate Modern gave her its largest survey.

Hardcover, 140 pages, 24 by 30 cm, colour illustrations. English. Available online and in our shop at Vester Voldgade 106, Copenhagen.