The Sadeian Woman, 2025
Anna Sampson (b.1993)
This artwork draws inspiration from feminist reinterpretations of Marquis de Sade, particularly the writings of Angela Carter, who is the namesake of this work. Rooted in feminist, psychoanalytic, and erotic discourse, it responds to the Freudian concept of the “death drive”, exploring how ritualistic symbolism and transgressive desire can evoke a new kind of ‘muse’— one that embodies both pleasure and pain, strength and fragility.
With surrealist undertones, the work reclaims de Sade’s narratives within a contemporary queer and feminist framework, occupying a space suspended between documentation and curated fantasy. It lingers in the threshold where vulnerability meets resistance, and where performance becomes both a site of rebellion and self-reclamation. The figure emerges as a mythic presence, interweaving folklore, witchcraft and surrealism.
Positioned as a living altar — simultaneously sculptural and ritualistic— the body becomes both object and act of resistance, and the burning candles symbolise transformation. Through a queer female gaze, the work challenges and transgresses the boundaries that govern desire, power and representation.
60 x 40cm each
Archival pigment print, Edition of 5 + 2 AP, Signed
Framed
Unavailable
Saatchi Gallery, 'The Sun & The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial' , June - September 2026; Richard Saltoun Gallery, 'Unveiled Desires: Fetish & The Erotic in Surrealism, 1880 - Today: Part 1', October - December 2025; Backroom Foundation, 'The Ballad of Sexual Independency', December 2025
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.
