AT THE INTERSECTION OF SCIENCE AND POETICS: LUCÍA PIZZANI IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Venezuelan-born, London-based artist Lucía Pizzani presents her first institutional UK exhibition at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea. Through a series of new installations and in collaboration with artists Cecilia Bonilla, Jaime Gilli and local community groups, Pizzani reimagines the Essex coast, linking geological transformation with contemporary questions of climate change, migration, and social transformation. 

Faunal Succession is formed of three environments that merge installation, sculpture, painting, sound, and community participation. Each space references the geological strata of coastal Britain and its living organisms, combining scientific and poetic interpretations of the landscape. The exhibition title refers to the principle of faunal succession: the observation of chronological patterns in fossils that allows geologists to accurately date sedimentary rock layers. For Pizzani, this physical manifestation of 'deep time' becomes a framework for rethinking contemporary human and ecological crises, revealing borders and national identities as constructed and recent concepts. 

The first installation examines chalk as a significant material in relation to British identity. The politicisation of England's coastline has transformed its white cliffs into imposing physical and symbolic borders. However, chalk also functions as a visual record of deep time, formed from the accumulated remains of microscopic organisms over millions of years when the British Isles were connected to larger land masses and borders did not exist.

Sculptural installations made of chalk from Chafford Gorges will fill the centre of the gallery, having been painted, engraved, carved, merged with dried plants, and combined with fleshy folding ceramic forms. The surrounding gallery walls will feature faint bodily marks, made by the artist imprinting her limbs, head, and hands onto the wet plaster in a solitary performative act. The resulting traces appear reminiscent of fossils, which reveal the behaviours of ancient organisms.  

The second environment is focused on amber, a fossilised tree resin prized for its jewel-like shine, and for how it preserves small organisms and plants within it. In the gallery space Pizzani will create an amber 'time capsule' of flora and fauna, within which a forest of ferns emerges from clay vases, patterned with imprints of fossils, and carved into using dried root vegetables sourced from South America.

A series of collages reflecting on hybrid beings, created during workshops with the local migrant community in collaboration with the charity Welcome to the UK and led with artist Cecilia Bonilla, will be displayed alongside. A sound piece created collaboratively with musician Jaime Weyler, with recordings made during these workshops, will be played in the space.

Artist Jaime Gili has created large paintings on cut canvas, using naturally occurring iron oxide pigment, which interact with ceramic pieces by Pizzani to form a mural that will be visible from the square outside the gallery. This work references William Smith's 1815 geological map, a foundational but extractivist view of Britain's landscape. The geological map has been reinterpreted by the artists, inspired by Gili's collaboration with local schoolchildren, for whom English is a second language, in a series of 'subjective mapping' workshops. These workshops challenge conventional, resource-oriented mapping, instead emphasising experiential and emotional understandings of place. Other new works collaboratively created during these workshops, will also be displayed as part of the exhibition. 

Faunal Succession will be on display until May 30, 2026, at Focal Point Gallery, Elmer Square, Southend-on-Sea, SS1 1NB (United Kingdom).