Tessa For Dada, 2019
Anna Sampson (b.1993)
‘Tessa for Dada’ (2019) is an archival pigment print by Anna Sampson that exemplifies the artist's ongoing exploration of the body as a site of performance, desire, identity, and resistance. Combining the intimacy of erotic portraiture with a heightened sense of theatrical staging, the work presents a visual paradox that transforms the body into an object of ritual, consumption, and fantasy. A reclining female figure is framed by the gesture of a knife and fork poised above her, creating a provocative scene that conflates eroticism and consumption. Through this unsettling juxtaposition, the body is transformed into a symbolic rather than purely bodily presence.
The work's title invokes the legacy of Dada, signalling an affinity with avant-garde strategies that challenge conventional notions of beauty, representation, and fixed identity. Drawing upon both Dadaist and Surrealist traditions, the work disrupts everyday logic by displacing familiar objects from their expected functions and repositioning them within a psychologically charged space where desire, power, fantasy, and playfulness intersect. The resulting image is at once seductive and unsettling, prompting viewers to consider the dynamics of looking, objectification, and consumption. The knife-and-fork motif recalls the uncanniness explored by Meret Oppenheim and Man Ray, while its carefully staged eroticism evokes Surrealism's fascination with desire, fetishism, and the transformation of the body into a symbolic landscape.
Working exclusively with analogue processes, Sampson employs photography not as a documentary tool but as a space in which gender, sexuality, and power can be negotiated and reimagined. The work reflects her sustained interest in harnessing the erotic potential of the body while exploring strategies of self-representation and resistance. Through its carefully constructed composition and symbolic imagery, ‘Tessa for Dada’ positions the body as both subject and agent, engaging contemporary debates surrounding desire, autonomy, and representation.
Educated at Chelsea College of Arts (2015) and later at University College London (2021), Sampson's practice is informed by intersectional feminism and examines the body as both a site of pleasure and a terrain upon which social and political power relations are played out. Across her work, she engages with questions of gender, sexuality, performance, and identity, creating images that challenge normative modes of looking while foregrounding agency, embodiment, and resistance.
Anna Sampson (b.1993)
Anna Sampson is a London-based photographic artist working exclusively with analogue film and traditional darkroom processes. Her practice explores the intersections of performance, the erotic, and surrealism, redefining conventional ideals of 'beauty' through a distinctly queer female gaze. Within this framework, she constructs images in which bodies and identities resist categorisation—queer, subversive and defiantly playful. Central to Sampson’s work is the cultivation of an inclusive and celebratory space of desire: one rooted in a sustained commitment to erotic portraiture and the visibility of radical, 'othered' forms of beauty. Through carefully staged and often dreamlike compositions, she creates images that challenge dominant narratives surrounding gender, sexuality, and representation. Approaching erotica as both a critical and creative practice, Sampson reimagines the genre for the twenty-first century not as spectacle or provocation, but as a form of resistance.
Anna holds a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts (2015) and an MA in Gender & Sexuality from UCL (2021). Her work has recently been exhibited at Richard Saltoun Gallery (2025; 2026) and Saatchi Gallery (2026), and Anna is also an invited speaker and panelist at institutions including Christie’s (2023), Hayward Gallery (2024), and Central Saint Martins (2025). Her work has been featured in leading cult publications, including DAZED, i-D, AnOther, Purple Fashion, Gay Times, and The Face.
In July 2024, Anna released her debut artist’s book, Other Intimacies, in collaboration with the Hayward Gallery and Rediscovering Art by Women (RAW). This limited-edition publication foregrounds themes often left in the shadows of contemporary discourse: queer desire and intimacy, subversive exploration of gender, sex work, and the unapologetic, embodied exploration of self. The book is now sold out, with the last remaining copies available with Claire de Rouen, Dashwood Books, Les Mots à La Bouche, and ALAÏA.
