Tracey Emin – Why I Never Became a Dancer
(Contemporar)
1 October 2026, 15:00
As part of the Artist Stalk Cluj program, we have invited artists connected to the local scene to join the conversation and propose a video work, installed in the gallery space, that serves as a key reference: a work that has left a mark on them, shaped their artistic sensibility, or opened up new perspectives for them. For the fourth Artist Stalk in Cluj, Gianina Cărbunariu has selected the video work Why I Never Became a Dancer by Tracey Emin, which can be seen at Contemporar from 1 to 4 October 2026, with the kind support of White Cube London.
About Tracey Emin
Dame Tracey Emin was born in 1963 in London. She currently lives and works between London, the South of France and Margate, UK. In 2007, Emin represented Great Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale, and her installation My Bed (1998) has been included in ‘In Focus’ displays at Tate Britain with Francis Bacon (2015); Tate Liverpool with William Blake (2016); and Turner Contemporary, Margate, alongside JMW Turner (2017). In 2011, Emin was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in 2012, was made Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts. In 2024, she was honoured with a Damehood in the King’s Birthday Honours for her services to art.
Emin has exhibited extensively including major solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2026); Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut (2025); Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2025); Munchmuseet, Oslo (2021); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2020); Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2019); Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France (2017); Leopold Museum, Vienna (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida (2013); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2012); Hayward Gallery, London (2011); Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland (2009); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2008); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga, Spain (2008); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2003); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002).
Since the early ‘90s, Tracey Emin has produced a body of work that encompasses all forms of artistic expression, including painting, print-making, drawing, film, photography, installations, appliqué, sculpture and neon text. Emin’s highly autobiographical nature of her work set it apart from the general artistic trends of the 1980s and 1990s. The artist is well known for her frank, confessional style and for transforming her inner emotional and psychological world—personal experiences, memories and feelings—into art that is both intimate yet profoundly universal. Emin’s art has an immediacy and often sexually provocative attitude that firmly locates her oeuvre within the tradition of feminist discourse.
View here her full biography: https://www.whitecube.com/artists/tracey-emin
About Tracey Emin – Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995)
Emin uses her emotional life as the source and subject matter of her art. Why I Never Became a Dancer invokes the artist’s early teenage years spent kicking against the boredom of the seaside town, Margate, where she grew up, and experimenting with sex from an early age until she became disillusioned with men and turned instead to dancing.
(Source: TATE collection text)
Tracey Emin – Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995)
1 – 4 octombrie 2026
Visiting hours:
Thursday (October 1st, 2026) 15:00 – 19:00
Friday – Sunday (October 2nd-4th, 2026): 16:00 – 22:00 (Noaptea Albă a Galeriilor)
With the kind support of: White Cube London
Event organized with the support of the Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Local Council.
