Notes on Emin: On Love, Loss and Longing
I’ve always known when things will end — from the first awkward hello to the very last goodbye. And yet, I chase love’s shadow to the end, knowing it will either destroy me or bring me peace. Usually it’s both.
Sometimes I think I do this to appease my own mental timeline, a kind of bravery I’ve convinced myself of, even though I know how it ends. Each time, I hope I’m wrong and that somehow love will outdo my intuition. But it never does.
Tracey Emin’s exhibition ‘I Followed You to the End’ at the White Cube Gallery grapples with love’s capacity as well and the way it shapes and scars the body in its wake. I visited the gallery with a friend on a sunny weekend, taking a visceral journey through love’s wounds, a reminder of how we're all marked by the choices we make in its name. Then, she asked the dreaded question, ‘do you think love is a choice or a feeling?’.
Hums of conversation softened as we stepped deeper into each room. A painting stands out: a solitary cat watching a bed. The bed has always been where I confront mortality. Cradled by death, it offers the solace of sleep while reminding me of my fragile body. The closest thing to a grave, it’s where vulnerability meets rest and renewal. It both terrifies and consoles me.
Emin’s paintings are volatile. You can trace the path of her impulsive brushstrokes, where red paint begins with passion and bleeds into rage. Hues of lovers, chaotic and tender blues, spill into one another and create a deliberate mess. Blood was a colour that infused the space. As we meandered through the gallery, the final painting confronted me. Its words read:
Like a fool, I followed love to the end. Like the sad haunted soul that I am, I followed you to the end.
I think to myself, all this anger on the canvas was once love. I pour into art too. Plastering my wounds with fragments of people, remnants of love I’ve never left behind. There was a time where I thought if my love could save them, they would be eternal: unchanging, unbreakable. But some can only meet me as far as they have met themselves. I am learning to step out of them, to step into myself.
Love doesn’t die when it leaves. And things are always left unsaid. Sometimes, the endings we resist the most have no desire to obey neatness. It is never as tidy as we want. Loss never feels complete, but it’s knowing that love is endless. A story that will simply shift on to new chapters and we have to learn to embrace that narrative. Whether it’s the end of a friendship, relationship, or version of myself, I’ve come to understand that death carries a love that brings new life.
So, I ask myself again: is love a choice or a feeling? Maybe it’s both. You start with the feeling, and then, inevitably, it becomes a choice. I look at Emin’s paintings and think. Love is a force that can devastate, but in that devastation, through every longing, you are always made anew. The deepest love we can give is to ourselves, the one that survives every death, every departure.
So must love entail sacrifice?
That's a question for another gallery trip.