This is mine, I own it': how Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo inspired me to make meaning out of pain

A self-portrait made shortly after a 2020 diagnosis shows a fragile body in a hospital mirror while maintaining direct, unflinching gaze. The image frames medical devices and post-operative clothing, emphasizing that the body remains present and meaningful rather than hidden. After life-saving surgery, extensive organs were removed, yet the artist documents the changes with autonomy. The statement “This is mine, I own it” is presented as a guiding affirmation. The same approach is linked to another person’s recovery after colectomy in 2023, where self-portraits were taken to record bruising, wounds, and medical marks, inspired by the artist’s refusal to conform to comfort-based expectations.

"In a photographic self-portrait taken not long after she was diagnosed with squamous cell bladder cancer in 2020, Tracey Emin's iPhone shrouds her right breast as our line of vision descends from her catheter to her urostomy bag to her disposable knickers. Her body is fragile here in this hospital mirror, yet her gaze is anything but. It looks us dead in the eye as if to say: I matter, this matters a sureness that challenges the notion of subjugation in times of ill-health."

"Even now, six years after her life-saving surgery, Emin refuses to conform to what may, or may not, make us feel comfortable when it comes to her post-operative body. As well as losing her bladder, Emin also lost her uterus, ovaries, lymph nodes, part of her colon, her urethra and part of her vagina. And yet she has found a striking autonomy in documenting the changes in her body."

"This is mine, I own it, she affirmed in an interview not long after her surgery. Striking autonomy I watched Myself die and come alive by Tracey Emin. Photograph: Ollie Harrop/Courtesy the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels It's a phrase that I recited, like a mantra, in my own hospital bed after my colectomy in 2023. And it was in tribute to Emin that I took self-portraits of my body when I was recovering at home."

"In one photograph, taken two weeks after my surgery, my right hand lifts up my jumper to reveal the bloated and bruised belly beneath it knickers folded down to expose its bloody surgical wounds. In another, my camera homes in on the purply-grey comet tail of an IV drip bruise that streaks across my left wrist. Would I have taken these photographs if it wasn't for Emin? Probably not."

Read at www.theguardian.com