Tracey Emin’s I feel you coming captures the essence of Emin’s work, exploring the central themes of the artist’s oeuvre: love, pain, violence, loss and grief. In the present work, Emin’s expressive, gestural strokes are translated into black thread, embroidered onto four panels of stitched calico. Her loosely drawn lines are charged with emotions, revealing the moments of anguish with visceral immediacy. These frantic strokes of emotional outburst are embroidered in black thread, transforming the cold ink into a soft cotton. As each stroke is sewn, one small dash at a t.mes , the memory is processed, a fragment of a second at a t.mes . The completed work is the outcome of Emin’s internal work - of remembering, ruminating, and contemplating.

Emin’s use of embroidery dates to the early days of her career. One of her most well-known sculptures, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95, the artist embroidered the names of everyone she had shared a bed with onto the inside of a tent. The use of embroidery in the present work to create nude pictures of herself at moments of vulnerability, subverts the traditionally feminine associations of the medium and challenges contemporary conceptions of femininity. Not only does the artist present the raw emotional turmoil, but she also confronts her painful past episodes of sexual aggression with unflinching honesty. Taking inspiration from expressionist painters Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele, Emin’s work is uninhibited in the way it absorbs and reflects her internal state. However, unlike her male inspirations, Emin’s work actively challenges the historical portrayal of female sexuality.

Born out of highly personal and intimate memory, the honesty with which she expresses the complex amalgamation of emotions carries universal resonance. Autobiographical and confessional in nature, I feel you coming is part of Emin’s extraordinary body of works in which the artist undergoes a life-long exploration into her womanhood and self.