Tracey Emin’s You forgot to kiss my soul, 2007 is exemplary of the artist’s ability to combine text and image to recount complex, intimate narratives. Emin, who has worked in neon for over three decades, has extensively exhibited her neons in international museums and public spaces. Each work is made from hand-blown neon tubing shaped in the artist’s distinctive scrawling penmanship. Thematically, Emin’s neons are an unrestrained depiction of the artist’s tumultuous relationship with love and heartbreak. Raw and confessional, the present example distils an epic romantic narrative into pithy verse evocative of her interior world.
“Neon is emotional for everybody . . . That’s why neon is at fun fairs, casinos, red light districts and bars. It’s also to do with the way it electronically pulsates around the glass, it creates a feel-good factor.”
—Tracey Emin Magnificently affective, You forgot to kiss my soul is a striking portrait of tenderness and vulnerability. Emin’s sloping letters are diaristic and emotive, as if written in a private note, and framed in a similarly organic outlined heart. Yet, in the soft glow of the white and pink neon, the artist’s private thoughts are put on display, communing directly with the viewer in an openness characteristic of Emin’s seminal works.
“I love writing. I think every artist has a backbone to what they do. For some it could be photography, painting, the ability to make a formal sculpture stand, but for me it's writing.”
—Tracey EminAcross her multidisciplinary career, which has spanned painting, needlework, installation and photography, the quality of intimate, autobiographical storytelling has remained a central tenet. The artist’s seminal early contributions, including her critically acclaimed works Tracey Emin, CV, 1995 and My Bed, 1998, are testimony the artist’s encounters with grief, love and trauma. Like these two foundational works, You forgot to kiss my soul relishes in the intersection of poetry and visual art to present a defiant vulnerability.
A notable example from Emin’s oeuvre, You forgot to kiss my soul was exhibited in Tracey Emin: Angel Without You at the North Miami Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014, which surveyed the artist’s neon works. Another example from the edition is held in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
