Tracey Emin has been given the “all clear” after undergoing extensive surgery for an aggressive form of bladder cancer.
The artist said that her cancer has “gone” and that she will be able to return to painting as well as “being happy, smiling more [and] just enjoying life”.
Emin was diagnosed last year with a “really rapid, really aggressive” bladder cancer. She told the BBC that she had since had her bladder, urethra and “half of my vagina” removed and had also had a full hysterectomy and had lymph nodes and part of her intestines removed to stop the cancer’s spread.
When she returned for her latest three-monthly scan, she was told that she was “all clear” of cancer.
Emin told Newsnight that she has a urostomy bag that has to be emptied as often as every 20 minutes, which feels like a “major disability”. She added: “You never know when it’s going to happen.”
Advertisement
She explained: “I’m not painting because I’m using my willpower to stay alive. That’s what I’m doing . . . I never realised how much I wanted to live until I thought I was going to die.”
The extensive surgical procedures to remove parts of her urinary and reproductive organs meant that the cancer “couldn’t actually latch on to anything else”, she said.
Emin, most famous for her art installation featuring an unmade bed and a tent entitled Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, said she will have annual scans to check if the cancer has returned.
She was speaking ahead of the reopening of an exhibition of her work alongside paintings by Edvard Munch on May 18, which had to close during the winter lockdown.
Emin said that she started working on the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition four years ago, long before her diagnosis, and said she had no idea at the time that cancer would create the “possibility that I was never going to see this show”.
Advertisement
She said she did not want to cancel the show, explaining: “If something happens to me, what else have I got? I’ve just got to do this.”
Emin was also critical of the government for placing museums and galleries in the same category as nightclubs when setting the schedule for reopening venues after lockdown, calling it a “big mistake” and “absolutely ridiculous”.
She said: “I think it’s because the majority of the government at the moment have never probably been to museums or art galleries.
“If they had and if they knew and if they knew the soulful benefits of looking at art, they would have kept them open or found some system to make it work.”
