Renowned British artist Tracey Emin is recovering in Thailand after her small intestine “nearly exploded” due to complications following an operation, she said in a social media post.

Emin, one of Britain’s best-known living artists, said Sunday on Instagram that she felt she had used “another one of my nine lives”.

The 60-year-old, a leading figure in the provocative Young British Artists movement of the late 1980s and 1990s, has battled cancer and undergone major surgery in recent years.

In her post, she said she had been “very unwell” and thanked a hospital and luxury hotel on the Thai holiday island of Phuket.

“Not cancer but horrible complications with my intestines brought on by an infection, scar tissue and made a million times worse by flying,” she wrote.

“My small intestine nearly exploded. Luckily for me I was in Thailand on my way back from Australia, so I spent a few days in a very good hospital and now recovering in luxury.”

Turner Prize nominee Emin was seen as an enfant terrible in the 1990s, making her name with eye-opening, often sexually provocative works, alongside a disarmingly frank public persona.

Her installation My Bed – an unmade bed surrounded by intimate debris including empty vodka bottles, cigarette packets and condoms – caused a sensation in Britain when it was unveiled in 1998.