Dame Tracey Karima Emin DBE RA (/ˈɛmɪn/; born 3 July 1963) is an English artist known for autobiographical and confessional artwork. She produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and sewn appliqué. Once the "enfant terrible" of the Young British Artists in the 1980s, Tracey Emin is now a Royal Academician.

In 1997, her work Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, a tent appliquéd with the names of everyone the artist had ever slept with, was shown at Charles Saatchi's Sensation exhibition held at the Royal Academy in London. In the same year, she gained considerable media exposure when she swore repeatedly when drunk on a live British TV discussion programme called The Death of Painting.

In 1999, Emin had her first solo exhibition in the United States at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, entitled Every Part of Me's Bleeding. Later that year, she was a Turner Prize nominee and exhibited My Bed – a readymade installation, consisting of her own unmade dirty bed, in which she had spent several weeks drinking, smoking, eating, sleeping and having sexual intercourse while undergoing a period of severe emotional flux. The artwork featured used condoms and blood-stained underwear.

Emin is also a panellist and speaker: she has lectured at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney (2010), the Royal Academy of Arts (2008), and the Tate Britain in London (2005) about the links between creativity and autobiography, and the role of subjectivity and personal histories in constructing art. In December 2011, she was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy; with Fiona Rae, she is one of the first two female professors since the Academy was founded in 1768. Emin lived in Spitalfields, East London, before returning to Margate, where she funds the TKE Studios with workspace for aspiring artists.

Emin was born in Croydon, a district of south London, to an English mother of Romanichal descent and a Turkish Cypriot father. She was brought up in Margate, Kent, with her twin brother, Paul.

Emin shares a paternal great-grandfather with her second cousin Meral Hussein-Ece, Baroness Hussein-Ece.

Her work has been analysed within the context of early adolescent and childhood abuse, as well as sexual assault. Emin was raped at the age of 13 while living in Margate, citing assaults in the area as "what happened to a lot of girls." Emin later said in an article she wrote for the Evening Standard that she had "no memory of being a virgin", citing numerous times she was raped as a young teenager.

She studied fashion at Medway College of Design (now part of the University for the Creative Arts) (1980–82). There she met expelled student Billy Childish and was associated with The Medway Poets. Emin and Childish were a couple until 1987, during which time she was the administrator for his small press, Hangman Books, which published Childish's confessional poetry. From 1983–86 she studied printmaking at Maidstone Art College (now part of the University for the Creative Arts). She graduated with a first class degree in Printmaking. Also, whilst at Maidstone college of Art, Tracey Emin encountered Roberto Navickas aka Roberto Navikas, a name which was later to feature prominently in her "tent". Emin however, mistakenly misspelled his name by dropping a C. Navickas used this error to promote two artworks of his own, some twenty odd years later when re-entering the art world. The works were titled "The Lost C of Emin: The Discovery" & "The Lost C of Emin: A Reliquary". (see tent below).