Tracey Emin's Sex and Solitude: An unmissable exhibition of love, loss and healing in Florence
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Florence is a city that worships the body - smooth, perfect, immortalised in marble. But Tracey Emin has never been interested in perfection. In
Sex and Solitude
, her first major solo exhibition in Italy, she brings a different kind of body to
Palazzo Strozzi
- one that aches, bleeds, collapses, and survives.
Wander into the courtyard of the Renaissance palace, built in 1489, and you'll find her colossal bronze sculpture
I Followed You to the End
(2024). The lower half of a fragmented female figure, two crumpled legs, dominates the space - a stark contrast to Florence's many triumphant bronzes, such as Benvenuto Cellini's
Perseus with the Head of Medusa
, standing victorious in the Loggia dei Lanzi. Emin's sculpture, which was previously shown at London's White Cube Bermondsey last year, denies heroism. Instead, it is raw, broken, and heavy with vulnerability.
Inside,
Sex and Solitude
unfolds as a non-chronological journey through more than 60 brilliant works spanning the 61-year-old artist's career - from early pieces that solidified her reputation as one of the most audacious voices in contemporary art to new works created in the wake of her battle with cancer. Paintings, drawings, film, photography, embroidery, sculpture, and neon come together across 10 thematically curated rooms.
From personal pain to public view
Emin first made waves in the 1990s alongside
Damien Hirst
, Sarah Lucas and Marc Quinn, as part of the Young British Artists (YBAs), embracing an unapologetically personal approach to art. She turned her own experiences - heartbreak, childhood trauma, desire, self-destruction - into installations, paintings, and neon declarations that blurred the line between art and autobiography.
'She's a forerunner of feminist artists for sure,' Arturo Galansino, the director of the Palazzo Strozzi and curator of the exhibition, tells Euronews Culture. 'She touches on themes that are really relevant for all kinds of people, all kinds of life experience. And why? Because she's very sincere, because of her openness. There is no filter, there is no structure. We can identify ourselves in her sorrow, her pain, her strength, her bravery."
Love Poem for CF by Tracey Emin (2007), on display at the Palazzo Strozzi
Credit: Ela Bialkowska
Stepping into the first room of the exhibition visitors are greeted with
Love Poem for CF
(2007), a neon work dedicated to Emin's great love of the '90s, gallery owner Carl Freedman. The giant piece glows in soft pink, its flickering light illuminating the space as it displays the raw intensity of her words: "You put your hand / Across my mouth/ But still the noise / Continues / Every part of my body / is Screaming / Smashed into a thousand / Million Pieces / Each part / For Ever / Belonging to you".
As Galansino explains: "Neon is one of the most famous languages used by the artist. Neon is related to her youth in Margate, which was full of neon, in the shops, in the bars, in the restaurants. It's a part of her autobiography. And her writings have become really iconic. The strength of these texts is undeniable, and Tracey proves herself as both a great writer and a great poet."
Words are at the core of Emin's art - not just in her neon pieces or appliquéd blanket pieces such as
I do not expect
, but in the way she titles her works. They're declarations, accusations and raw confessions.
Neon always has a seedy connection. But then I think it's sexy too. It's spangly, it's pulsating, it's out there, it's vibrant... For me it's always had a beautiful allure
Tracey Emin
Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996), displayed at the Palazzo Strozzi
Credit: Ela Bialkowska
The photographic series, 'Naked Photos', displayed at the Palazzo Strozzi.
Credit: Ela Bialkowska
In the next room is one of the show's centrepieces
Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made
(1996), a notorious performance-installation in which Emin locked herself in a room at a Stockholm gallery, stripped naked, and painted continuously for three and a half weeks (the time between menstrual cycles) under the watchful eyes of the public. For Emin, it was an act of artistic rebirth - after years of not painting following an abortion, she reclaimed her creativity. The installation has been faithfully recreated for
Sex and Solitude
- complete with paintings that appropriate iconic works by male artists like
Picasso
, Munch and
Rothko
, along with empty beer cans, a bowl of oranges, and hanging underwear. A three-piece photographic series,
Naked Photos
, documenting Emin's time spent in the room, accompanies the installation.
Displayed on the wall behind the installation, a quote from Emin reads: "I stopped painting when I was pregnant. The smell of the oil paints and the turps made me feel physically sick, and even after my termination, I couldn't paint. It's like I needed to punish myself by stopping the thing I loved doing the most. I hated my body; I was scared of the dark; I was scared of being asleep. I was suffering from guilt and punishing myself, so I threw myself in a box and gave myself three and a half weeks to sort it out. And I did."
A wide view of the room titled "Coming Down From Love" inside Tracey Emin's 'Sex and Solitude' exhibition
Credit: Ela Bialkowska
'I waited so Long' 2022 by Tracey Emin
Credit: Tracey Emin/Palazzo Strozzi
Elsewhere, themes of love, sexual desire, suffering, spirituality, the afterlife, motherhood, and healing run wild. Her figurative paintings - torn by energy, colour, and abstraction dominate the show and its two defining forces:
sex
and
solitude
. One particularly attention grabbing painting, scrawled with a frustrated urgency, declares: "I WANTED YOU TO FUCK ME SO MUCH I COULDN'T PAINT ANY MORE."
In perhaps the show's most intimate room, Emin turns her focus to the isolation and indeed solitude experienced during the
COVID-19 pandemic
- a period of collective uncertainty that held a uniquely profound significance for her. In the summer of 2020, she received a life-altering cancer diagnosis. A haunting series of paintings from this period depict interiors and self-portraits in a melancholic blue-grey palette. They take on a quiet, ghost-like quality. After extensive surgery, including the removal of her bladder, uterus, cervix, part of her bowels, and half of her vagina, Emin is now cancer free.
Every image has first entered my mind, travelled through my heart, my blood—arriving at the end of my hand. Everything has come through me.
Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin poses ahead of the opening of her show 'Sex and Solitude' at Florence's Palazzo Strozzi
Credit: Palazzo Strozzi
Wide view of the final room of Tracey Emin's 'Sex and Solitude' at the Palazzo Strozzi
Credit: Ela Bialkowska
For longtime admirers of Emin, the unmissable
Sex and Solitude
reaffirms her lifelong commitment to turning personal pain into raw, unflinching art. For newcomers, it's an introduction to an artist who has made vulnerability her greatest strength. But what seems like an intimate glimpse into her world is, in fact, an invitation to examine our own.
As Emin has said before: "I want people to feel something when they look at my work. I want them to feel themselves. That's what matters most."
Sex and Solitude
runs until 20 July 2025 at Florence's Palazzo Strozzi.
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