Tracey Emin’s A Fortnight of Tears at the White Cube: ADVISORY WARNING: CONTAINS SCENES OF AN UPSETTING NATURE

Review by Georgia McConnell

Photo Credit: White Cube

“A fortnight of tears” is Tracey Emin’s honest description of the period of time she spent

weeping after her mother’s passing. She wept for so long that she even burst a tear-duct.

The doctor advised her not to cry anymore. This seemingly an absurd piece of advice,

spurred Emin to channel her energy into her art. And with the grief and mourning was born

this exhibition.

Each room within the White Cube forces the viewer to engage with a different sensation;

disgust, repulsion, and empathy for the loss her mother, her aborted child and the sexual

abuse she endured growing up.

Do actions really speak louder than words? In the case of Emin her infamous technique of

combining penetrative brushstrokes with writing proves to be extremely effective. Effective

in producing an emotion from the viewer, that is. (I was not the only one in the gallery

quietly sobbing through the room dedicated to her mother’s death.)

South Gallery 1: Insomnia Room Installation

This first room holds a series of selfies taken during periods of Emin’s insomnia.

Emin describes feeling good about her appearance in some of them, while in others, awful.

She reveals in an interview that the photographs were indicative of her emotional state at

the time and how secure she felt about herself. These photos are consciously uninviting, with scabby eyes, cracked lips and unflattering angles. In some photos her breasts are purposefully exposed. Traditionally in art history the

exposed female breast is considered erotic, yet the photo is anything but. The most disturbing ones are where Emin’s empty gaze is completely void of any feeling or emotion. Emin later describes in her short film that her eyes feel dead; she compares herself to a living tree with branches that never blossom. But are these selfies self-aware or self-absorbed? I found them effective, but perhaps a bit too affected in their posed nature.

South Gallery II: The Abortion Clinic

Reading up on Emin’s past both helps and hinders to understand what she is going through

in these narrative paintings. The texture of the dark paint splattered over the white canvas resembles blood-clotted

liquid, an all too familiar sight for menstruating women. Emin expresses intense memories of abuse, sex and abortion. The scenes are violent and sickening. I tried to make sense of a painting that describes a female figure with her legs spread apart with a head underneath her. The title for this painting, ‘And So It Felt Like This’ does not match quite what I was imagining. Emins explains this image in her 1996 film, How It Feels, as the heart-breaking memory of her aborted foetus falling directly out of her womb and into her hands days after the abortion had taken place.

In the same room I found the most impressive large bronze sculptures , so uncharacteristic of Emin’s usual style. The gigantic bronzes resemble a woman curled up in a foetal position. Abstracted and fleshy, the bronzes appear moulded by hands, dented by gigantic finger prints.

Room 4: The Ashes Room

I can tell you the exact moment I started welling up. It was right in between the painting I Could Feel You and the short film, The Ashes, which shows a camera hovering over her mother’s ashes in a box on a table. But thrown into the mix of the Ashes gallery is a rather out of place painting, one of explicit desire. Warning: Try not read all of the words on the paintings out-loud...

Auditorium:

Her film, How It Feels (1996), explains it all if you still had any doubt about the messages and themes of the exhibition. And as you would expect, quite explicitly. To become a ‘great artist’ does one have to go through such pain and suffering? While the answer should be no, there always seems to be a correlation between ‘great artists’ and

having a history of grief and suffering. Tracey Emin says that she had the abortion because at that stage in her life she saw herself as “a failure” having not achieved anything. Nine years later, reflecting on the abortion, she sees it as a mistake but perhaps the best mistake she ever made. If she had raised the child, she speculates that she wouldn’t have made the art that she has, she would not be a “great artist”.

Over the years Emin has received a lot of public criticism for being ‘un-talented’ and a bit of a hot-mess. Her work is always guaranteed to provoke a reaction from the public; be it positive or negative. Admittedly I was part of the group that sided against her. But this show has changed my opinion of her completely. Her work is honest and speaks directly from the brutality of her own experiences.

Tears will shed if you’re feeling a bit numb and especially if you enjoy self-inflicted misery, (i.e listening to sad songs or watching sad films to heighten your woe-is-me feeling), then this is the right exhibition for you. Even if this is not the case, I still recommend going to this rollercoaster experience of a show. Is this her greatest work? I think hindsight will show that this was her greatest exhibition.