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The LeadIn 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.The Art of Bodily AutonomyEven 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.The Personal Becomes PoliticalWould I have taken these photographs if it wasn't for Emin? Probably not. In the weeks that led up to my own life-saving surgery, I became increasingly fixated on the ways in which her no-holds-barred Polaroids, like the squares of her autobiographical blankets, were urging us to look at her in ways that perhaps we'd rather not. Twenty-seven years after her sculptural work My Bed catapulted her to tabloid fame in the late 1990s, Emin is still challenging us to acknowledge the things we tend to pull away from. Only these days her bleeding nudes are centred squarely on the presence of non-visible disability and what Harry Weller, creative director of Emin's studio, calls "her wild scramble for existence".Challenging the "Confessional" Label"Back in the 90s, people used to say it was confessional art," Emin recently mused to Maria Balshaw, director of the Tate. Only it wasn't. "I wasn't confessing anything at all to anybody," she corrected her past critics – and maybe even her present fans. I thought of Emin's vital reframe only a few weeks ago when I visited her landmark show at Tate Modern and contemplated her 2023 painting, I watched Myself die and come alive. In it, her red-swabbed body is splayed out on a table, she is watched over by the black cloak of death, and her mother's ashes are resting in a casket behind her bloody hair. Like most of Emin's artworks, this painting isn't asking for a certain kind of gaze from us – it exists for itself alone, and that's what makes it so corporeally present.The Legacy of Frida KahloCall it visceral, call it personal. But, like Emin, I too struggle with the word "confessional" in relation to women's expression of their experiences. The implication being that there is something guilt-inducing and therefore even shameful about a woman drawing attention to herself both in her life and art. As if by doing so, she needs to beg pardon for it. Only Emin has never subscribed to this falsehood. Come to think of it, neither did Frida Kahlo over the course of her all-too-short life (Kahlo died when she was only 47) – another autobiographical artist whose retrospective is set to appear at Tate Modern next month.Transforming Trauma into TranscendenceWith an anatomical eye on her wounds, Kahlo would redraw what she called her "body's landscape" on her own terms, making her disabilities into something transcendental, a devotional act that helped her transform the mundanity of her physical limitations into something extraordinary. As Kahlo's biographer Hayden Herrera remarked in 1983, Kahlo's art has a particular intensity and strength "that can hold the viewer in an uncomfortably tight grip". We can see this for ourselves in her 1944 artwork, The Broken Column: a valiant self-portrait of chronic pain that evokes the Saint Sebastian paintings of the Christian faith.

The Lead: Tate’s Successes Mask an Impending Leadership TestIn a buoyant briefing at the Adelphi Building, Roland Rudd highlighted soaring visitor figures and a historic membership base, painting a picture of an institution on the rise. Yet the recent resignation of director Maria Balshaw after nine years signals a pivotal moment for the world‑renowned art charity.Chair Rudd Flaunts Visitor Gains Amid a Leadership VacuumRudd cited marquee shows – Turner & Constable at Tate Britain (270,000 visitors), Lee Miller’s photography exhibition, and Tracey Emin’s retrospective at Tate Modern (125,000 paying visitors) – as proof that “things have never been better.” He added that total footfall for the quarter ending March hit 6.2 million, up 200,000 on the previous year.Visitor Numbers, Membership and Financial Snapshot6.2 million visitors in the latest quarter155,000 members – the largest cultural‑institution membership in the UKPandemic‑induced deficit of £56 million in 2020Multiple rounds of redundancies and a £48 million cost‑cutting programmeOperational Strains and Cultural Battles Facing TateDespite the rebound, the Tate wrestles with lingering pandemic fallout, staff morale “on the floor,” and a series of “culture war” disputes, including controversies over historic artworks and the relevance of the Turner Prize. Government funding has consistently lagged behind inflation, and nine culture secretaries have overseen the organisation during Balshaw’s tenure, adding political volatility.What the Next Director Must TackleThe incoming chief will need to balance continued audience growth with fiscal prudence, restore staff confidence, and navigate identity‑politics debates while preserving the Tate’s global reputation. Success will hinge on securing sustainable sponsorship, revitalising underused spaces such as the Blavatnik Building, and delivering a clear vision that steadies the “unwieldy beast” without stifling artistic ambition.