She then pasted the names of all her lovers (and her two aborted children) on the inside walls of a tent and called her work Everyone I Slept With 1963-1995.
And the day it was first exhibited was the same day Britain was introduced to its most controversial contemporary artist.
So, love Emin or hate her, it’s impossible to ignore her, for Emin challenges the assumptions of the world of arts and of public appearances. And Emin’s artistic capabilities, which are provocatively intimate and raw, reflect this.
From rags to riches
Emin and her twin brother were born in 1963, the love children of a British girl from the East End and a married Turkish-Cypriot man.
She had a rough life and in her teens, Emin was raped in her hometown of Margate. This incident, coupled with her very promiscuous lifestyle, heavily influenced her work as an artist.
It wasn’t until Emin met artist and musician Billy Childish in the eighties that she discovered her artistic talents.
Her post-Childish life was lived on the edge of “emotional suicide,” as she called it. An abortion she went through in this period tore her apart and Emin destroyed all her early work.
In 1994, though, she was invited to exhibit at the White Cube Gallery in St James. She may well have thought it was her first and last exhibition and called it My Major Retrospective.
But the grotesque curiosities displayed – among which there was a packet of cigarettes her uncle had been holding when decapitated in a car crash – ensured that she stayed in the artistic spotlight.
Mad route to fame
Everyone I Slept With 1963-1995 set the tone of Emin’s art and paved her path to fame.
It was followed by You forgot to kiss my soul, My cunt is wet with fear and I need art like I need God.
In 1999 she came up with My Bed - a real bed personalised to reflect Emin’s character: blood-spotted underwear, vodka bottles and remnants of cigarettes.
And the irreverence paid off. My Bed was bought by the art collector Charles Saatchi and exhibited at the Tate Gallery.
Emin was now at the forefront of the BritArt Movement. And as a tribute to Emin the artist and the Emin the queen of controversy, David Bowie sang “William Blake as a woman”, while critic Philip Hensher said there was “no hope for Tracey Emin”.
But Emin, meanwhile, was busy painting a self-portrait which depicted her with a bundle of bank notes up her crotch.
It was called I Have Got It All.
