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Tracey Emin was made a Dame for her services to British art and also told the BBC that she has been cured of cancer for four years.

Emin, one of Britain’s best known artists, was diagnosed with severe bladder cancer in 2020 and underwent major surgery.

She says she never believed she would be alive today, “let alone sitting here and becoming a lady.”

“When you have cancer at the level I had, where you really think you’re probably going to die and you have months to live – and then suddenly everything turns around. It’s like you’re reborn and life starts over again and all these really amazing things happen.”

We meet in the studio of her impressive house in central London on a Georgian square in Bloomsbury.

We are surrounded by her paintings, some of them on chairs. The drops of white, red and blue paint on the parquet floor beneath them are a testament to Emin’s style.

“I’m pretty aggressive with the color and my movements and my strokes and everything,” she says.

The announcement of a lady’s status during the King’s birthday honours on Friday was completely unexpected, she says.

She was already made a CBE in 2012, but “Dame Tracey,” she laughs, “has quite a ring to it.”

“It’s really cool,” she says. “I don’t think this has ever been done before.”

She might not have become Dame Tracey if she had not noticed a letter marked “urgent” that lay unopened in her former studio.

She tells us that she spent a day at a garden party at Buckingham Palace and shook hands with the King and Queen.

“I thought this was a bit weird. I’m kind of on top here. I wonder why.”

It was only on her way home that she received the call about the letter. I have the feeling that she hasn’t stopped smiling since then.

Emin rose to fame as one of the YBAs, alongside artists such as Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. The Young British Artists, founded as a label in the late 1980s, were known for their openness to different materials and processes, their shock tactics and their entrepreneurial spirit.

She had left school at 13 and had previously spoken of being abused as a child and raped at that age. She told me that she did not return to school until she was 15, “by law,” and only until she was allowed to leave school. She spent most of her time in the art department.

Emin always wanted to be an artist. Her art teachers encouraged her. She actually met an artist, Mrs Morris, at Marks and Spencer a while ago. “She was 86 at the time and she was so proud of me and it was so sweet.”

Emin has always created highly personal work. My Bed, her groundbreaking installation that won her the Turner Prize in 1999, was a messy double bed surrounded by overflowing ashtrays, used condoms and empty vodka bottles.

But whether it was a depiction of a period in her life when she was unwell and drinking too much and eating too little; or a neon sign that read “I really could have loved you”; or one of her emotive paintings, Emin has always incorporated her emotions, experiences and traumas into her art.

She describes art to me as “many spaces”. Her space “is emotional and it’s about feelings, and it should act like a magnet to attract other people, their emotions and their feelings”.

“Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995” (the dates correspond to the years she had lived at that time) was another early autobiographical work.

Emin had painted 102 names in a tent. The title of the work suggested sexual encounters, but she also listed people with whom she had spent more innocent nights in her life, including her twin brother Paul. She also touchingly mentioned the two fetuses from an abortion a few years earlier.

Emin tells me that her art is not just about her, but that it is a filter for others.

“My art is a place where people can express themselves and feel their own feelings and emotions when they look at it.”

Looking back, she says, “I made art about rape, abortion, teenage sexual abuse – many, many taboo subjects. And I made these subjects open and up for discussion, which can only be a good, healthy thing.”

This happened long before the MeToo movement.

The media and some critics have often dismissed Emin and her work, making negative comments about her looks and accent. The press has treated her “quite devilishly,” she says.

She became famous – but she didn’t play along. She was open, she drank and sometimes swore.

She quit drinking alcohol in 2020. Now, at the age of almost 61, she tells me that her biggest regrets are smoking and not taking care of her health, rather than drinking.

She documented her cancer journey on Instagram and her treatment included the removal of her bladder and other pelvic organs during lockdown.

If you sit next to her now, she looks like the picture of health.

“Being named a Dame is a cause for joy and celebration for me as it is another milestone in my life,” she says.

This also means that she is now “one hundred percent” part of the establishment, even though she herself says she was not “the best role model.”

“I wasn’t trying to be a nerd, and I wasn’t trying to do the right thing. I was living my life the way I wanted to live.”

She says being named a Dame is a sign that attitudes are changing and there are different ways of recognising what is positive or good. “I really appreciate that.”

She has already been named Freewoman of Margate (“they gave me the keys to the city, it was so beautiful”).

Emin lives mainly in the coastal town of Kent, where she grew up and set up the Tracey Emin Artist Residency (TEAR), which she came up with while recovering from surgery. She has converted the old public baths into artist studios that 10 students can use rent-free for 18 months.

Creating art is a “solitary” activity, but she also wants to talk about art as much as possible. Hence TEAR. “I decided to have more art around me. That was actually a bit selfish.”

She is modest. The project is her latest opportunity to use her voice to advocate for her beliefs and highlight the importance of funding creativity.

The art world is changing, but she believes it is “really a man’s world,” especially painting. “All the great female painters have been erased from history. Well, now they’re coming back.”

She hopes her generation of female artists has helped make this happen by shining a spotlight on the lost artists of the past and changing “the perception of what art is.”

One reason she took the title of Dame is because “it gives me a louder voice to do the things I think are important.”

“Not for a second” did she think about saying no. “I just thought, wow.”

“People like me don’t become ladies unless they’re athletes,” she says.

There’s nothing better than a lady, the song says. And there’s certainly no one like Dame Tracey Emin.

She is an artist who never compromised and who fearlessly bared her soul through her art. And she is an investigator of her own life who has helped us all understand more about our own lives.