Tracey Emin, Britain’s greatest female artist: ‘Against death, illness or pain, art wins’

A self portrait of Tracey Emin from June 2024 - (Courtesy Tracey Emin)

As her cat Tea-Cup furtively sashays across the kitchen table in her seaside house in Margate, Tracey Emin can barely contain her excitement at her new 90-work show, A Second Life, at Tate Modern. It’s a blockbuster, which shockingly splits her work into two halves, life BC and life AC – Before Cancer and After Cancer.

Sipping tea, piano music filtering through the white painted rooms, dressed top to toe in black, she’s like the queen on a chess board waiting for her medication to kick in to stem bleeding and reduce pain. Her cancer may be in remission, but the aftermath is still searing. “I put all my energy into art, always have done, always will – against death or illness or pain, art wins. I feel lucky, and I feel happy,” she grins. “Remember, my surgeon called me a miracle woman.”