Abi Joy Samuel (b.1993) is a London-based artist working across sculpture, painting and performance. Through her own body, she investigates the tension between external systems of power and an intimate search for selfhood, exploring the conflict between the body as it is socially constructed and the body as it is internally experienced.

Her work begins with her own body, using sculpture as a primary form of self-investigation. Through plaster and silicone body casting, bronze and steel, she creates expressionistic figurative sculptures that seek to uncover an existential inner reality. Steel armatures recall archaeological display, isolating each cast body part for close examination. Working through a modular process, Samuel continually reconfigures individual casts into new compositions, treating each cast as both an independent form and part of an evolving whole. Existing between excavation, resurrection and self-realisation, her sculptures explore the monstrous as a means of uncovering something that has always existed beneath the surface of the intact body.

Performance extends this investigation into the social body. Through choreographed instruction, military-derived movement, ritual and moments of erotic charge, Samuel examines how female identity is shaped through capitalism, systems of control and exchanges of power. If sculpture seeks an internal truth, performance interrogates the external forces that act upon it.

Samuel studied Fashion Design, graduating in 2017 before working for brands including McQ Alexander McQueen. In 2025, she completed the Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art with distinction. She was awarded the Quinn Emanuel Residency in 2024, culminating in an exhibition at Frieze Gallery, London. In 2026, she completed an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, supported by the Leverhulme Arts Scholarship.