Lucia Pizzani’s portrait. Image courtesy Santiago de la Puente at Casa Wabi.

We are delighted to share that Jenn Ellis has been appointed the Frieze and Breguet curator for 2024-5.

Ellis will be curating a series of projects—one at each fair in New York, Seoul, London, and LA—rooted in emotion and evolutionary change. Each project is conceived as a chapter, linking global perspectives, and blending science, art, literature, and mechanics to craft four succinct and delicately poignant polyglot experiences.

Clay, seeds and other ancestors, presents Lucia Pizzani’s expressive practice that explores migration, language and materiality through the voices of plants and ancient practices. Through her use of clay and seeds, across sculpture, works on paper, performance and video, Pizzani weaves together narratives and contemplations from different temporalities around human and botanical legacies. Seeking to preserve stories of migration, from cultural traditions to the movement of plants and its implications, Pizzani speaks to her own journey from Venezuela to London, and evokes the layers and stories of an increasingly hybrid, complex and global world.  

The last of four chapters curated by Jenn Ellis exploring the overarching theme of ‘evolutionary change’, Pizzani’s presentation at Frieze Los Angeles marks her first solo presentation in the city and premieres a newly commissioned reformulation of her ceramic talismans and guardians. Handmade of dark black and red stoneware clay, and raised on bespoke plinths and shelving, each sculpture incorporates imprints made by various seeds. Crucially, each holds an element of plant life, such as corn and a palm, which has been cast – for the first time – in bronze. Symbolic in its selection, the flora speak to an important cross-oceanic and cross-continental journey of ancestral significance: corn, for example, was native to the Americas, and considered by the indigenous population of Mesoamerica a gift from the gods and source of life – now, it is one of the most widely grown crops. These works are accompanied by several small to large drawings made by pressing wet clay onto paper. This process of markmaking uses the clay’s pigment which is a testament of a territory as each one has a particular coloration. With this body of work Pizzani unfolds a  story around materiality and the origin of language by using shapes and forms rooted in our collective unconscious.

Ultimately, ‘Clay, seeds and other ancestors’ is an exploration of what gets passed on and what remains. Drawing parallels with Breguet, there is overlapping rigour with regards to research, history as well as care for the use of one’s hands and traditional materials. Both vested in a care for our natural and human world, Pizzani through her practice and Breguet through their time-held legacy, the project finale considers the elemental aspect of ‘evolutionary change’: how we as humans adapt, and the integral role our natural world plays. 

Born in Caracas and based in London, Lucia Pizzani’s expressive practice involves the body and self always informed by materiality. One of her core concerns is the interrelationship between narratives of women in history and processes of metamorphosis in the natural world. She works across a variety of media – including photography, ceramics, videos, drawings, performances and installations. Having worked as part of the environmental movement in Venezuela for many years, she has always incorporated ecological elements into her artwork. 

Her work is part of the TATE Collection, Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art (Stockholm), Essex Collection for Art from Latin America ESCALA and the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) amongst others. Recent exhibitions, residencies and commissions include SMOKE (curated section, Frieze London 2024), El Cercado Ceramic school (Isla de Margarita, Venezuela), the Harewood Biennial (Leeds, UK), Planet B Climate Change and the new sublime, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud at Palazzo Bolanni (Venice), Peckham24 (London), Casino Luxembourg (Luxemburg), TEA Museum (Tenerife), Casa Wabi and the Puerto Escondido Botanical Garden (Oaxaca, Mexico), LaunchPad Lab (Charente, France) and Hacienda La Trinidad Art Centre (Caracas). She is a studio artist at Gasworks (London).