Transient Roots explores humanity’s kinship with nature through a duo presentation of sculpture and photograms by Lucia Pizzani and Vanessa da Silva. Lucia Pizzani presents two groups of new work for this exhibition: a series of unique photograms and an installation of stoneware ceramics. The artist was born in Venezuela and emigrated to Europe, with her family settling in the Canary Islands and herself in London. She created the photograms in the Canaries, using the bright winter solstice sun. Inking fantastical anthropomorphic lifeforms onto paper, she then arranges locally foraged leaves, branches, and seeds over the photosensitive ink, leaving semi-transparent shadows with their silhouettes. In Pizzani’s stoneware works, she imprints plants onto soft clay, patterning the surface and recalling the Mayan creation myth Popol Vuh. In the myth, after failing in clay, the gods successfully mold humans using corn. Fashioning humanoid elements from elemental materials points to the beginnings of art in civilization. For Pizzani we start at the beginning, with the rising of the sun.
