By Sarah Johnson
Tracey Emin is taking up space at the Tate Modern until August. “A Second Life”. You walk in fully prepared to roll your eyes at the neon words and the messy beds.
You don’t.
She lived through cancer. She survived it. That brutal, ugly medical fact hangs over the entire show. It changes the gravity of the room. It makes the older pieces look completely different. Less like teenage screaming and more like someone fighting a very long war against her own body.
It physically hurts to look at some of it. The vulnerability is just entirely aggressive. You want to look away. Which basically means it works. She is still here. She won.