Tracey Emin

Emin's modern assertion of self-portraiture circumvents traditional notions of representation whilst serves to render an oeuvre that interrogates the distinctions between life and art, therefore her produced work burgeons directly from the construct of her internal architecture.

By deploying her self and her life as subject matter she simultaneously rejects preconceived notions that facilitate the linking of the feminine with passivity, although Emin's confessional art may be delineated as narcissistic, even solipsistic it is argued that it is precisely the act of disclosing fragments of oneself that enable an individual's positioning within contemporary society.

Emin (b.London 1963) is a British artist whose work forcefully portrays personal anecdotes through a patchwork of mediums, with the employment of channels such as hand scrawled neon lights she conveys messages alluding to her own traumatic female experiences and not only the role of women but also the treatment of women within society at large.

In My Bed 1999, Emin deploys the detritus of a young woman's quotidian life into the realm of contemporary art, depicting a frozen moment in time, the artist conveys the physical exploitation of her literal lifestyle whilst providing renlentless self-disclosure. Yet, it is the juxtaposition of such absolutely intimate subject matter with a direct lack of explanation that facilitates observer's intrigue.

It is within the public chronicling of her existence, one which is displayed with such immediacy and humility that produces inevitable relative authenticity. Although after reading her autobiography Strangeland I did approach Emin's work with an inherent nauseasnous it is hard to deny that her work provides an endless topic for discussion.