(b Croydon, Surrey [now in Greater London], 3 July 1963). British artist, active in various fields. Emin's large output has embraced painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, film, Performance art, and writing, but whatever the medium it is usually autobiographical, dealing mainly with her turbulent private life (including her rape at the age of 13). Her confessional, often sexually explicit subject matter and her uninhibited public behaviour (notably a drunken appearance in a live television debate in 1997) have helped to make her one of the best-known and most controversial avant-garde British artists of her generation, alongside another enfant terrible, Damien Hirst. In spite of such notoriety, Emin prides herself on being a dedicated and hardworking professional artist.