‘Bad girl’ artist Tracey Emin to show her pensive side in first Hong Kong show

Tracey Emin, the “bad girl” of Britain’s art world who made a name for herself by airing her dirty laundry in public – sometimes quite literally – will stage a solo exhibition in Hong Kong next March.

The exhibition, called “I Cried Because I Love You”, will be held concurrently at two separate commercial galleries in Central: White Cube and Lehmann Maupin, and will be the artist’s inaugural solo show in China.

Emin has been to Hong Kong before. In 2014, she hung a heart-shaped neon sign with the message “my heart is with you always” on the front of The Peninsula hotel. It might have given local art lovers the impression that this former wild child who made Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963-95 and My Bed, the 1998 display of detritus from her personal life – dirty sheets, underwear stained with menstrual blood, used condoms, cigarette butts and empty alcohol bottles – had lost her zing.

This time, the few preview images released to the press suggest that we will see Emin being pensive rather than saccharine, reflecting on the past quietly.

There are traditional sketches of the female nude that may be self-portraits, and an embroidered work where she has used needle and thread like a paint brush. She will also be bringing works made with neon lights and bronze, the galleries say.

In interviews, Emin has confessed that age has mellowed her, that she is no longer the young woman who would swear, drunkenly, on live television and make artworks that were brutal, that constantly screamed for attention.