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Tracey Emin Won't Disappoint Posh Ladies

by Zoe Strimpel
Thu, 5 Jun 2008 at 5:33 PM

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Putting Tracey Emin in charge of a room at the Royal Academy of Arts's Summer Exhibition was always going to provoke the establishment. Hot on the heels of fellow enfants terribles Jake and Dinos Chapman's shocking Hitler-based show at White Cube, Ms. Emin has not disappointed. Or, rather, she's made her choices true to form and there's plenty to wrinkle the noses, even if it's with a sense of low-level disgust. Some have said Ms. Emin has behaved like a schoolgirl pulling her pants down to be naughty. "I won't disappoint anyone who expects outrage," Ms. Emin told the Times of London.

Among her choices are Israeli artist Sigalit Landau's video of a naked woman using barbed wire as a hula hoop and becoming progressively bloodier as she goes; a picture of female genitals during menstruation, and an image of a zebra mounting a human. The former Turner Prize short-lister Rebecca Warren is in situ with explicit displays of large women.

If you noticed a sexual theme, that's because Ms. Emin went straight for it. The tradition for the exhibition is that Academicians (she was elected last year) are invited to curate a room of their own according to a theme. Sex is hers. "I don't think posh ladies will come into my room and feel let down because they can't find any pubic hair," she was quoted as saying in the Times.

It's a far cry from the maple leaves covering rude areas in 1768, the year of the first Summer Exhibition. Whether things have improved is another story.

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