Tracey Emin shares powerful topless birthday post five years on from life-changing cancer surgery | OneFootball

Tracey Emin has shared a powerful message on her 62nd birthday, reflecting on her “life changing” surgeries for bladder cancer in 2020 that left her using a urostomy bag.

The visual artist underwent a series of major procedures, including a full hysterectomy, as well as the removal of her urethra, bladder, lymph nodes, and part of her vagina and intestine. She announced that the cancer was “gone” following the surgeries in April 2021.

Emin now has a stoma (an opening on the abdomen connected to the urinary system allowing waste to be diverted out of the body) and uses a urostomy bag, which she will need to use for the rest of her life.

In a post shared to Instagram, Emin said she’d turned 62 on Thursday (3 July) and now feels “very old”, like she’d “been in a cave or under the ground for a very long time”.

She told her followers, alongside a photo of her cleaning a pool topless, on Saturday (5 July) that rather than celebrating her birthday, she wanted to celebrate her life and “just being alive and not dead”.

“It’s [been] five years since my life changing surgery to beat a very bad nasty uncontrollable cancer,” she wrote.

“Against all the odds I beat it. I fought it with all my heart and soul because I wanted to live. I would have hated to die then.. So much more I want and need to do.”

(Instagram @traceyeminstudio)

Emin continued: “ My love for art and my home town of Margate has in the last few years had a chance to shine through.

“I love everything I’m doing here and how the town is such a brilliant creative pumping art house. I love that I’ve been sober for five years. I never want to be drunk again.”

The artist, who was awarded a damehood in the King's Honours List in 2024 added: “I love being a Dame. I love my cats, Teacup and Pancake, and I love my friends. I’m so lucky to be surrounded by such good people. Really, I’ve never had it so good.”

She concluded: “Thank you everyone for all your love and support,especially over the last five years when I truly needed to feel loved and wanted.”

On International Women’s Day back in 2023, Emin penned a powerful personal essay in The Independent about her relationship with her body after surgery. Here, the artist admitted that she “hated” her bag, “but most days I’m philosophical; knowing that it keeps me alive”.