Artist Tracey Emin’s ‘small intestine nearly exploded’

British artist Tracey Emin is recovering after her “small intestine nearly exploded” while she was in Thailand.

The 60-year-old said she had suffered “horrible complications” brought on by an infection while travelling.

Emin, who is best known for headline-grabbing works in the 1990s such as Everyone I Have Ever Slept With and My Bed, was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2020 and underwent major surgery.

In November, she wrote a first-person article for the Evening Standard saying she was in Australia after suffering a bad bout of E.coli.

She shared the news of her latest recovery to her 200,000 followers on Instagram – her first post since regular updates in October.

“I’ve had shows, I’ve been travelling and I’ve been very unwell,” she wrote. “Not cancer but horrible complications with my intestines bought on by an infection, scar tissue and made a million times worse by flying. My small intestine nearly exploded.”

Emin said that “luckily” she was in Thailand when she became unwell, during her journey back from Australia, and had spent several days in a “very good hospital… and now recovering in luxury”.

She told her followers she had been placed on a special diet and would return to the UK once she was well enough, and thanked Bangkok Hospital and a retreat on the island of Phuket for looking after her.

“Apart from using up another one of my nine lives… I’d say I was very lucky,” she wrote.

Emin was one of the so-called Young British Artists who emerged in the 1990s, along with Damien Hirst, and remains one of the most well-known British artists of her generation.

She is famous for her autobiographical and confessional work, including My Bed – a notorious installation including empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts, stained sheets and used underwear – that was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999.