Arabel Lebrusan (Madrid, 1974) is a Spanish-born, UK-based visual artist working across object-based sculpture, installation, site-responsive practice, and socially engaged projects. Her work explores the material and emotional entanglements between humans and land, with particular attention to extractivism, ecological grief, gender violence, and social histories embedded in matter. She transforms materials already marked by violence or extraction – police-confiscated knives, iron ore, coal minerals, domestic objects worn through use – into sculptural forms that hold histories of labour, loss, and care.
Lebrusan holds an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art (2023) and an MA in Jewellery Design from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (2007). She completed a BFA in Fine Arts at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1998), with an Erasmus exchange at the Hogeschool van de Kunsten, Utrecht (2000).
In 2021 Lebrusan was awarded a Research Fellowship at the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics, University of Brighton, for her two-year project Toxic Waves, which explored extractivism and ecological grief through sculpture and socially engaged practice. She has received project grants from Arts Council England for Blunt Blades (2021), Freehold (2015), and Lace in Place (2012). Further residencies include Quiet Down There at Brighton Open Market (2024), Social Circles Collective at Phoenix Art Space, Brighton (2023), Summer Lodge at Nottingham Trent University (2017), and an arts for social change residency with Pioneers of Change in Johannesburg (2005).
Lebrusan has exhibited and developed projects in galleries, museums, project spaces, and public contexts across the UK, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Selected exhibitions and projects include:
Cartographies of Care (2026), group exhibition curated by Cassinelli Mills in partnership with KARST; HomeLand (2025), socially engaged site-specific installation, Southcombe Barn, Devon; Dartmoor Clayscapes (2025), Southcombe Barn, Devon; Femicides (2024), Quiet Down There, Brighton; Hysterical (2024), Bermondsey Project Space, London; London Art Fair (2024); Cura (2023), Smolensky Gallery, Manchester; Hung, Drawn and Quartered (2023), Standpoint Gallery, London; BRINK (2023), Royal College of Art, London; Blunt Blades (2021–2023), The Higgins Art Gallery and Museum, Bedford, with a text by curator and critic Fatoş Üstek; Toxic Waves (2021), Brighton CCA; Freehold (2015), Museum of St Albans, UH Galleries; Object as Muse (2008), Crafts Council touring exhibition; London Art Fair (2009), Rebecca Hossack Gallery; and TREASURE at the Tower of London (2008).
Earlier international exhibitions include Fotonoviembre (2003), Tenerife International Photography Biennial; and group exhibitions in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Utrecht, and the Philippines.
A significant strand of Lebrusan’s work involves sustained collaboration with communities and organisations working across land, knife crime, femicide, and social justice. Blunt Blades Exchange (2021) saw police-confiscated knives transformed into rings made with women at the Women’s Support Centre Surrey. Lace in Place (2012) was a site-specific socially engaged commission by Bedford Creative Arts in Bedford town centre. HomeLand (2025) involved community clay-making in response to land and belonging in Devon.
Lebrusan has taught and lectured widely, including as a guest lecturer on the MA Jewellery and Metal programme at the Royal College of Art (2025), Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins (2013), and guest lecturer at Warwick University and the University of Cebu. She gave a TEDx Talk on ethical jewellery at TEDxBedford (2015) and has spoken at the University of Brighton, the Assay Office Birmingham, and the Royal College of Art on extractivism, fair luxury, and art as activism.
Alongside her sculptural practice, Lebrusan is a pioneer of the ethical jewellery movement in the UK, with over 25 years of practice developing deep material knowledge of precious metal extraction and supply chains. Her jewellery studio practice is documented at lebrusanstudio.com.
Lebrusan’s work has been reviewed and featured in The Guardian (Skye Sherwin, 2015), The NAJ, Bricks Magazine, and Hertfordshire Life, among others. Critical texts on her work have been written by curator and critic Fatoş Üstek, Jeremy Akerman, Annabel Lucas, Deborah Dean, and Sam Cornish.