In Dialogue with the Self: The Art of Tracey Emin

Abstract

Tracey Emin’s artistic practice is particularly diverse and comprises of various media ranging from video, performance, photography and painting to installation work, drawing and sculpture. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to do her oeuvre justice in a thesis of limited word length. Instead, this thesis focuses on three prominent examples of Emin’s work: installations, neon works and drawing, in order to examine how these different media add nuance and meaning to a complex exploration of the self and notions of selfhood. Emin’s artworks act as a bridge between the private and the public, investigating the way in which the self is mediated by interaction with others, social structure and autobiographical knowledge. Emin’s use of specific media in relation to body schema and body image also acts as a conscious attempt to make visible and explicit issues of gender, sexuality and violence in relation to the multiplicities of self and identity, whilst questioning aesthetic traditions, normative body images, and social stereotypes. It is also the exploration of experience and imagination in relation to a variety of notions of the self that is of particular importance in the study of Emin’s art and the focus of this thesis. The majority of interpretations of Emin’s art through the lens of the self thus far have tended to provide highly reductive and stereotypical views of her self as narcissist, slut and fame/media whore. This thesis seeks to challenge such responses by providing a more ‘polyphonic’ and sophisticated model of self, which, it is argued, the three varying media examined help to develop and give voice to in specific ways. A more complex theory of what the self is helps to reveal aspects of Emin’s work hitherto ignored, whilst the artist’s skilful use of particular media extends our understandings of what the self is in contemporary life and art.