Curated by Huma Kabakci, The exhibition Transient Roots with artists Lucia Pizzani and Vanessa da Silva explored bodily forms; metamorphosing, mapping, migrating, and questioning belonging through their relationship to nature and their surroundings.

Lucia Pizzani presented 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 arranged locally foraged leaves, branches, and seeds over the photosensitive ink, leaving semi-transparent shadows with their silhouettes. In Pizzani’s stoneware works, she imprinted plants onto soft clay, patterning the surface and recalling the Mayan creation myth Popol Vuh.

Rising from the ground up, Vanessa da Silva’s sculptures generated the impression of uprooted bodies that appear to constantly move and mutate. Born in Brazil and living in London, da Silva’s work explores human migration and belonging through her sculptural bodies. Carved into foam and then coated and polished in fiberglass, da Silva used a classic direct carving method made strange by the boney perfection of the sanded surface. Elevated on individual platforms, they are caught mid-dance, floating like lily pads. In her Muamba Grove series, da Silva’s forms reached out like limbs, curving to inhabit space and inviting us to use our own bodies to join their dance. Da Silva’s sculptures defied the laws of gravity while also wielding a corporeal presence.

Photo credit: Sapling x Open Space & Sam Nightingale