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

What happened

According to The Guardian’s source item, ‘This is mine, I own it’: how Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo inspired me to make meaning out of pain, Emin’s unsparing examination of her cancer and Kahlo’s intensely imagined response to traumatic injury moved our writer to take self-portraits while recovering from a serious operation 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,

Context

The development sits in VINI’s Technology file for readers following technology, science, product policy, markets, infrastructure, and the public consequences of innovation. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-05-19T13:05:30+00:00.

What to watch

Open questions include whether primary sources issue follow-up statements, whether local or market impacts become clearer, and whether additional reporting changes the timeline or adds material context.

Source

Primary source: ‘This is mine, I own it’: how Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo inspired me to make meaning out of pain via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.