Lucía Pizzani: Faunal Succession

Venezuelan-born, London-based artist Lucía Pizzani presents a major new project unfolding across three venues along the British coastline: Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea, KARST in Plymouth and Mostyn in Llandudno. In the exhibition, Pizzani reimagines the coast through a ‘deep time’ lens linking geological transformation with contemporary questions of climate change, migration, and social transformation. Each iteration will evolve in dialogue with local research and landscapes, partnering with community groups to develop workshops whose outcomes will be integrated into the final presentation. Faunal Succession will premiere at Focal Point Gallery, marking the first institutional exhibition in the UK by Pizzani, before travelling to KARST in Summer 2026 and Mostyn in Spring 2027.

Faunal Succession will be formed around three immersive environments that merge sculpture, performance, and community participation. Each space references the geological stratum of coastal Britain and its living beings, combining scientific and poetic readings of the land. The exhibition title refers to the principle of Faunal Succession, the observation that fossilised plants and animals appear in a consistent chronological order across different layers of rock. For Pizzani, this idea of temporal layering becomes a framework for thinking about both human and ecological histories.

One of these environments will focus on amber, a fossilised tree resin prized for its jewel-like shine and for how it preserves small organisms and plants trapped within it. Within the exhibition, Pizzani aims to create an amber ‘time capsule’ inviting reflection on environmental change and the passage of geological time through a collaborative collage produced with local community groups. A new sound piece will explore underwater imagery, connecting the ocean’s role as the origin of life with its current environmental challenges, while clay vases containing coastal plant species will reference the interdependence between land and sea, with the plants to be returned to local coastal sites at the end of each exhibition.

Another space examines chalk as a material with a deep connection to British identity and culture. Chunks of chalk will be engraved, carved, cut and re-shaped, and body marks, made by the artists’ limbs, head and hands, will be imprinted in plaster and sand onto the floor and walls of the space. These resulting traces appear reminiscent of fossils, which reveal the behavioural patterns of ancient organisms. The chalk itself also functions as a visual record of deep time, formed from the accumulated remains of microscopic organisms over millions of years.

In collaboration with artist Jaime Gili, Pizzani will also create a mural, incorporating white ceramic elements shaped like shells, bones, and fossils. This work reinterprets William Smith’s 1815 geological map, a foundational but extractivist view of Britain’s landscape. Through a series of community ‘subjective mapping’ workshops with migrant and refugee groups based in Essex, among others, Pizzani and Gili seek to challenge conventional, resource-oriented mapping. Instead, they aim to emphasise experiential and emotional understanding of place.

About the Artist:
Lucía Pizzani (Caracas, 1975) works across photography, sculpture, ceramics, performance and installation to explore the interrelationships between historical narratives and processes of metamorphosis in the natural world. She holds a BA in Communication Studies from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Caracas), a Certificate in Conservation Biology from CERC at Columbia University (New York), and an MFA from Chelsea College of Arts (London).

Recent solo exhibitions include Clay, Seeds and Other Ancestors at Frieze No 9 Cork St with APSARA & Frieze Studios, (London, 2025), Trópico Pasado at Galleria Doris Ghetta (Ortisei, 2025), Rites, Seeds and Refuge at Cecilia Brunson Projects (London, 2024), Morada Vegetal at Abra (Caracas, 2023), Merunto: In the House of Spirits at Bosse & Baum (London, 2022), Tiempo Membrana at Hacienda La Trinidad (Caracas, 2021), and Coraza at Fundación Marso (Mexico City, 2019). Recent projects and commissions include presentations for the Amazon Biennial (Belém), Frieze Sculpture (London), West Middlesex Hospital in Twickenham with Chelsea and Westminster Foundation Trust (London), Harewood Biennial (Leeds), Magasin3 Museum of Contemporary Art (Stockholm), Palazzo Bolani for Planet B: Climate Change and the New Sublime, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud (Venice), the Serpentine Galleries’ SEEDS programme (London), and Cabilla, curated by Sol Calero at TEA Museum (Tenerife). Pizzani’s work is held in public collections including Tate, Magasin3 (Stockholm), the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA), and the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC). She lives and works in London where she is a studio artist at Gasworks.