29/05/2026
: Faunal Succession, Lucía Pizzani’s first UK institutional solo exhibition at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea. I urge you to visit before it closes tomorrow Sat 30 May.
I was delighted to attend the opening in March and, although this post is long overdue, I couldn’t let the show close without sharing.
Having played with clay in my past, I’ve always been drawn to Lucia’s practice & her approach to materiality. She creates sculptures, collages, paintings & installations that feel deeply connected to nature, whilst carrying stories of memory, transformation, migration and belonging. For me, Lucia carefully connects clay back to our centre.
Through a series of immersive environments, with new works by Lucia as well as collaborations with artists Cecilia Bonilla, Jaime Gili and local community groups, Faunal Succession reimagines the Essex coastline through a ‘deep time’ lens, linking geological transformation with contemporary questions of climate change, migration & social change. The title is from the idea that the age & history of a place can be understood through the layers embedded within its land. This concept is a particularly moving metaphor within Lucía’s work, as she explains in an interview with curator Ines Costa (4).
As the daughter of migrants, and having been one myself too, this idea of layers speaks to me profoundly. Being Colombian, Egyptian & British, I found myself thinking about lands that hold extraordinary histories within their soil and stone. About biodiversity, archaeological and geological depth and the ways indigenous, ancient and current cultures and civilisations understood, respected and worked in close dialogue with the materials of their environments.
It was also special to visit Southend with my Scottish-Egyptian ‘cousin’. We spent many childhood family weekends there together, and so the show became a space where personal histories, migration, landscape, memory and belonging overlapped.
Thoughtful, enchanting & deeply researched, this exhibition rewards slow looking. Intimate & expansive, scientific & poetic, rooted in specific geographies whilst speaking to experiences many of us carry within. 👏🏾
