Women, Sex and Warzones | Day 2 in London

TRACY EMIN – A SECOND LIFE
Tate Modern, London, Feb – Aug 2026
 
“If we keep carrying the shame, nothing is going to get sorted out, is it?”
This says Dame Tracey Emin, announced by Tate Modern as ‘one of the most important contemporary artists of her generation’ in a YouTube interview. (see link below)
 
‘Talking about rape is important,’ Emin says.
In her forty-year career as an artist she has ‘made her work about her life, and the fact that it includes sexual violence is something that I think is the universal story.’ (https://www.tate.org.uk/story-player/tracey-emin)
 
Shame.
Shame is a difficult emotion. Shame, by definition wants to hide. When we feel ashamed, we look away, we don’t want to be seen.
Shame.
In the world of women and bodies and sex, shame is no stranger for most of us.
Shame about certain body-parts. Shame of liking sex. Or not liking sex. Shame about sexually not-being-good-enough. Shame about the abuse we endured, and the rape(s). Shame about the unwanted pregnancy(s), the miscarriage(s), the abortion(s).
Point is – we often carry shame that doesn’t belong on our plate to start with. For example, as is well known, many of us feel ashamed after being raped, thinking that we must have done something wrong. Reporting it to the police often doesn’t help.
Same with child-abuse – the child feels ashamed and can’t talk about what’s happening. And feels wrong.
But, really, shouldn’t the rapist, the perpetrator be the one to carry the shame? How come the right is on their side?
Shame becomes a weapon to silence us, shut us up, let wrong things perpetuate, make us believe that we’re the crazy ones.
If anything, Emin has not played the devastating game of shame and being shamed.
“When I was younger, people thought I made very narcissistic work, and very self-indulgent and very vain work, because it was me, me, me.
But now, times have changed. People realize that making work about rape, abortion, teenage sex, all of these subjects are really important, because they have to be discussed. And right now, in the world, it really needs to be discussed. So, anybody that thought I was ranting about abortion, 30 years ago – look what’s happening now.”
The work in the exhibition isn’t explained much. The work itself and the titles say it all.
It’s an experience.
‘This show of undiluted love, heartache and pain left me a teary wreck,’ writes Eddy Frankel in the Guardian.
Me too, I needed to get out for air after the intensity in the exposition rooms. However, as I shed some tears in the river Thames – explaining to my sympathizing friend that the tears weren’t so much for myself, at this point, after having been on the subject of sex for a lifetime, but for the collective experience of being woman – she commented quietly, “I also saw a lot of love.”
All together another groundbreaking event – the raw, the violence, the pain of a woman’s body and sexuality, as well as the passion and the love, openly exposed by a, finally!, recognized artist, in no less than the Tate Modern of London.
Only by bringing things in the open, change can happen.
Emin, “The thing is, people pull away from pain. But if you don’t feel things, then you live your life numb. That would be the worse thing to me, to feel numb.”
 
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/tracey-emin
https://www.tate.org.uk/story-player/tracey-emin
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/feb/25/tracey-emin-review-tate-modern-london