Tracey Emin's neon artworks are a pivotal part of her diverse and emotionally charged portfolio, reflecting her unique ability to blend personal narratives with universal themes. Since the early 1990s, Emin has been utilizing neon as a medium to convey her innermost thoughts, juxtaposing simple and intimate handwritten text against a medium traditionally used for commercial or urban purposes. Her neon works are recognized for their pastel-colored light tubes, bent to mimic Emin's own handwriting, illuminating phrases that range from confessional to cryptic yet universally relatable messages (The Art Story) (Artsy).
One of Emin's notable neon exhibitions, "Tracey Emin: Angel Without You" at MOCA North Miami, was her first solo show at an American museum and focused exclusively on her neon works. This exhibition, which featured over 60 works spanning two decades, underscored the significance of neon in Emin's artistic journey. The title piece, created specifically for the exhibition, along with other neon phrases, stem from Emin's personal history and internal dialogues, serving as relics carrying their own histories. Emin's fascination with the mystical practices of Islamic Sufism and the poetry of Rumi, which she explored in her master's thesis at the Royal College of Art, also influences her neon work. This spiritual exploration is evident in her quest to discover divine love, paralleling Rumi's poems (Artsy).
Emin's transition to neon marked a shift in her career, moving from more explicitly confessional messages to creations that are both more enigmatic and universal. By using the second-person pronoun rather than specific names, her neon works function like love letters, meant for a loved one to discover and read. This shift illustrates Emin's evolution from personal confession towards a broader engagement with love and human connection (Artsy).
Her neon work "I Never Stopped Loving You," dedicated to her hometown of Margate, highlights Emin's capacity to convey profound personal and communal sentiments. This piece, like many of Emin's neon works, plays on the contrast between the personal touch of her handwriting and the commercial connotations of neon signage. Emin's neon art, therefore, occupies a unique place in contemporary art, bridging the gap between the deeply personal and the universally accessible, between the commercial and the intimate, and between public spectacle and private contemplation (Art in Context).