“I look at myself, and I paint myself, but they’re portraits of my mind, of my deepest thoughts.” – Tracey Emin


Lehmann Maupin and White Cube present I Cried Because I Love You,  Tracey Emin first solo presentation in Greater China. Spreading over the two gallery spaces in Hong Kong, the exhibition brings together older pieces alongside new paintings, drawings, embroideries and neon works. A narrative focused on Emin‘s union with a large stone, located in an olive grove just outside her studio in the South of France, threads the duet of shows, metaphorically expressing the state of longing to be with someone and the stability that comes with enduring love. Tracey Emin has described her artistic practice as being about “rites of passage, of time and age, and the simple realisation that we are always alone”. Repeatedly turning to self-portraiture and the classical nude, her new works seem nevertheless bolstered by a newfound sense of self-accomplishment. Emin worked from photographs of herself, in order to honestly convey and reflect on the physicality of her own body as the years pass. “It’s my life. I think I’ve cried over more people that I love than people that I hate. I don’t think I’ve really hated hardly anyone. I think my big mistake is loving people too much” she said. I Cried Because I Love You is a poignantly and touching analysis of the pain of loneliness, the complexity of desire, and the bitterness of separation and loss.