NEW YORK—Arguably, there are few stones left unturned, Tracey Emin-wise. After all, much of her work is rooted in autobiography — beginning with her “Sensation”al tent Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 — and she’s already issued her memoirs, titled Strangeland, in 2005. Two years ago she shot to further art world fame when she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale, and she’s also been inducted as a Royal Academician. And over the summer Rizzoli published the hefty, brick-like volume One Thousand Drawings by Tracey Emin.

Last week Emin was in New York for the opening of her latest exhibition, at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, “Only God Knows I’m Good,” which consists of a wide variety of new drawings, embroidered pieces, and a video animation, almost all focused on the female figure and Emin’s favored topics: dreams, love, and sex. There are also two somewhat enigmatic, seemingly abstract sculptures, and all of this work is arrayed beneath the radiant glow of a white neon work spelling out the show’s rather charged title. Emin spoke with ARTINFO about feminism, nightmares, and why people shouldn’t judge her.

What’s it like to show in New York, as opposed to in London, where you’re a full-fledged celebrity?

When I do a show in London, you get like a thousand people a day going to the gallery, and the opening is on the news. It’s a massive happening. Whereas in New York it’s kind of like just having an art exhibition.

Two years ago, around the time of your pavilion in the Venice Biennale, you said you were making the “most feminine” work you’d ever done. From the looks of this show, you’ve continued in that mode.

Yeah. Actually, I think if this show was done 25 or 30 years ago, people would put me down as a hard-core feminist.

So by feminine you meant feminist?

Well, the work is so predominantly female that it smells of a woman. It can’t be made by a man. In the art world, that’s still frowned upon. It’s still not considered to be of equal merit. If my embroideries were oil paintings they’d be three times the price. And if they were made by a man, they’d be four or five times the price.

Do you think of yourself as a feminist?

When I had my interview for art school in 1983 and they said to me “What do you think about feminism?” I said, “I don’t.” But now I do. I have to think about it to continue what I’m doing in a man’s world. The older and more successful I become, the more I realize how much of a man’s world the art world is.

All of this touches on something you said in an interview around the time of the Venice Biennale, about coming to terms with being a “midcareer artist.”

My show at the Biennale was a midcareer show. I said to the curator, Andrea Rose, “What should I do? I want to show what I’m working on now, but I also know I should show ‘the best of Tracey Emin.’” She said, “Darling, show whatever you want that will take you through to the future. Don’t think you have to do what other people expect you to do.”

Your sculptures may be the least understood part of your output. There are two in the current show.

A Norwegian film crew said to me, “Is there anything in your work that’s really private?” I should have said, “Yeah, my sculptures.” Because no one fucking gets them.

Ok. Well, they are very different from the rest of your work.

All my sculptures are. I’m having a show at the Hayward Gallery in London in two years and I’m going to show lots of my sculptures, and I know when people see all my of them together, they’ll get it. People don’t understand how I can go from this sort of abstract sculpture thing to this narrative drawing thing. They can’t make the link between them.

What is the link between them?

The sculptures are extremely personal. And I dislike the use of walls to divide up the space in galleries. The sculptures are a device to break up the space, so you can look at the drawings, or whatever else I’m showing, in relation to the sculptures.