105. ABI JOY SAMUEL: A SPACE BETWEEN VISIBILITY AND INVISIBILITY.
PREVIEW: M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) ISSUE 4 RELEASED MAY 2025.
Abi Joy Samuel, ‘Abandoned Shirt/Intergenerational Trauma’, 26 May 2024.
‘My work speaks to those who are silenced. It doesn’t just document these objects; it creates a space where they are forced into view, where they stand in contrast to their usual silence, much like the silence I often feel when trying to navigate these complex layers of identity and history’ A.J.S.
The first time we discussed your work, I think was in a tutorial and I saw the photographs which are in the next issue of M-A and I was amazed at how ancient they appeared, like statues but in fact were of a shirt tied to a lamppost?
I think I’m trying to hold time still.
When I was ten, I went to an exhibition at the Science Museum about the Titanic. They’d pulled thousands of artefacts from the wreck—preserved through the 4km fall to the seabed. I remember a jar of olives—still sealed, still green. A bottle of wine. A pair of shoes. A comb. I remember staring at it and somehow feeling the long hair of a woman running through its teeth. All of it underwater for a hundred years. I didn’t understand how that was possible, but I remember the feeling. Like time could fold in on itself.
That stayed with me—the idea that the past isn’t gone. It’s just... somewhere else. Waiting.
I remember feeling the same way when I saw images of Auschwitz for the first time—the thousands of shoes and clothes. The trauma of Jewish history is frozen in my body. I believe a lot of things are frozen in my body. I suspect I carry my mother’s trauma too.
I was a happy child. But when I started making art, sometimes what came out was very dark. I think what I’m trying to say is: intergenerational trauma can feel like something is frozen in time. That can be painful, but also—at times—sublime.
My experience is incredibly specific. I have siblings who share similar histories, but mine feels singular—something I carry alone. And because it happened before I had language, it can be hard to name or talk about.
So the work becomes full of small things that find me on the streets. There’s a kind of child-like simplicity to this ready-made approach. A shirt tied to a post. A mark on a wall. Someone else might walk past and not notice. But for me, they’re full of meaning. It’s like I’m noticing myself. The shirt becomes a ghost, its folds set by time. It reminds me of the timeless quality of 18th-century sculptures of veiled women—that illusion of softness carved into stone. Time, suspended. It becomes sacred.
I don’t stage much. I notice. I wait. I frame.
There’s always a tension between disappearance and presence. I’m drawn to things that might be gone tomorrow. That feel like they belong to someone else — or to everyone. I photograph them not just to keep them, but to ask what they mean. To me. To whoever is looking.
Maybe it’s less about freezing time and more about staying with it. Sitting inside the pause. Letting things hum—like a lullaby. Like singing myself to sleep.
Your practice became entrenched with discovering what was in plain sight and yet these artifacts often felt as if you alone could see them...
There is, for me, something distinctly Jewish about the objects I find and photograph. Being Jewish often carries a particular kind of invisibility, a quiet, persistent exclusion that only Jews can truly understand. Rachel Shabi captures this beautifully in Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism, where she explains how “the dormancy itself is part of the cyclical nature of antisemitism—that things are fine, until, all of a sudden, they aren’t.” (The term 'dormancy' refers to the way antisemitism is often treated as something inactive or hidden, only to surface violently and unexpectedly when societal conditions shift.)
In many ways, my work responds to this dormancy—the tension between visibility and invisibility. It’s simple: I take what is invisible and make it hyper-visible. The tension in my work mirrors the Jewish experience, particularly during those rare, fleeting moments in history when Jews find some measure of success or acceptance—only to be thrust back into the spotlight of whatever issue is most pressing at the time.
I feel this invisibility and sudden hyper-visibility not only in my own life but also in the broader Jewish experience. Even within progressive circles, we are often othered, as David Baddiel writes in Jews Don’t Count: "A sacred circle is drawn around those whom the progressive modern left are prepared to go into battle for, and it seems as if the Jews aren’t in it.” On the other hand, we are also excluded by the right, treated as a minority. As one of my Jewish artist peers puts it, we are “politically homeless.” Discussing antisemitism within the context of Israel and political unrest often feels like it gets dismissed as "missing the point," but for many of us, the experience is incredibly visceral.
My work speaks to those who are silenced. It doesn’t just document these objects; it creates a space where they are forced into view, where they stand in contrast to their usual silence, much like the silence I often feel when trying to navigate these complex layers of identity and history.
I am fascinated at your command of different media, you focused alot on sculpture and yet I realised later that you have a background in drawing, what media do you contemplate most within?
Yes, I draw a lot, and it’s been a common thread throughout all of my creative endeavours. I completed my A Levels in photography, art, textiles, and psychology, then went on to do an art foundation at Central Saint Martins, followed by a degree in fashion design at the University of Westminster. After fashion school, I continued my fine art journey by attending the Royal Drawing School, where I studied anatomy and oil painting under various teachers.
Recently, sculpture—particularly working with ready-mades—has become an exciting intersection between my love of fashion, my interest in the human form as a vessel of expression, and my fine art practice. But drawing, especially on large-scale canvases, is what I focused on before attending the Royal College of Art in 2024, and I still find myself contemplating it regularly. In fact, I draw every day, and I have a storage container filled with sketchbooks in my garden. It’s a practice I deeply enjoy.
I would categorise my paintings and drawings as figurative expressionism—contemplations of my body in relation to socio-political changes, identity, and my evolving experience as a woman with a constantly shifting sense of sexuality. They exist in the tension between figuration and abstraction, using multiple layers of charcoal, pastel, and oil paint. The marks on the page—violent and vulnerable—reflect my personal relationship with self-expression through my body, often using personal film footage as my reference. I only work from moving images, never static ones, because life isn’t static, and it’s in the blurred, inconclusive images that I find my authenticity.
I am always open to my medium evolving. Perhaps it’s my way of refusing to remain static, as that would trap me in the illusion that somehow I’ve “arrived.” I’m deeply inspired by David Bowie, who was gifted with the ability to continually reinvent himself, both in his music and his public persona. He was a shape-shifter, a chameleon constantly changing and evolving. This idea of metamorphosis frequently appears in my drawings, and it speaks to the essence of the human experience: fluid and unpredictable. This is the power of reinvention—it allows me to remain open, curious, and, above all, true to myself. I know that if I were to become confined by gallery contracts or public image, it would stifle me. My art—and my identity—thrives on embracing change and evolution, staying as fluid as the experiences I want to express.
What do you feel your work as a whole represents?
Visible, unseen,
Resilience in fleeting form,
Body and power speak.
What are your signals for change?
Speak less, listen more.
Abi Joy Samuel is a contributing artist to the 4th issue of M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) published May 2025.