The Tale of the Eye, the Snake and the seed.

Site specific sculptural installation and sound piece by Lucia Pizzani for Frieze Sculpture 2025 presented by Galeria Doris Ghetta & Victoria Law Projects. Curated by Fatos Ustek this edition is titled “In the Shadows”.

PUBLIC PERFORMANCES: 16th of September 5:30 pm (By invitation)
16th of October 4pm open no booking required
Performed by curator Lucia Pietroiusti and singer songwriter Luzmira Zerpa and Lucia Pizzani.
Instruments and songs curated by Luzmira Zerpa. Concept and script by Lucia Pizzani.

SOUND PIECE CLICK HERE:

This sound piece was based on the 3 stories co-written Lucia Pietroiusti and Lucia Pizzani.
Voices: Pizzani, Pietroiusti and Luzmira Zerpa.
Sound design and mix by Weyler.

The Tale of the Eye, the Snake and the Seed by Lucia Pizzani is a site-specific sculpture and sound piece composed of three ceramic forms, each symbolising an archetypal motif from ancient iconography: the Eye, the Snake and the Seed. These elements, fired in clay and supported by steel structures, are placed across the landscape of The Regent’s Park.

Click here for the project PDF presentation

The Seed represents fertility and growth, referencing the biological cycles of nature and its generative power. The Snake, often associated with the earth and transformation, suggests renewal and the tension between life and death. The Eye is a symbol of protection and perception, a guiding presence in darkness.

In this work, Pizzani has incorporated metal mesh into the Eye to evoke the idea of tears. This element draws on a myth from the Venezuelan Andes about the Carú, an Indigenous princess whose fiancé died in battle against the Spanish colonisers. Carrying his body to the summit of a mountain, she implored the mountain god to restore his life. She died during the ascent, and her tears became a waterfall that still flows today. In the Andean landscape, pain was transformed into water—water as both a possibility of healing and a source of life. The tears in Pizzani’s sculpture speak to this transformative symbolism, resonating with the currents of our time: the environmental crisis, ongoing wars, and, on a personal level, the difficult situations in her home country of Venezuela.

Together, the three motifs form a sculptural triad connected through material, symbolism and place.
The installation is accompanied by a sound piece created in collaboration with Lucia Pietroiusti, Head of Ecologies at Serpentine. The two developed a fictional story embedded with a surrealist style, using dreams and psychedelic visions as a point of departure. They become the Eye, the Snake and the Seed through sensorial experiences both bodily and cosmic. This story was recorded as a layered audio composition, featuring fragments of spoken word combined with ambient sounds and field recordings captured in the park.

The resulting experience blends ceramic sculpture with literary and sonic elements, encouraging visitors to reflect on nature, mythology, and embodied knowledge.

The work is part of Pizzani’s broader practice, which investigates the intersection of the feminine, ecology, and material transformation.

Additional credits and thanks:
Nina Gonzalez-Park: welding and fabrication
Jan Brzezinski: field recordings at Regent’s Park
Maria Terradellas: dressmaking
Estefania Spelzini: ceramic studio assistant
Special thanks to: Claudia Trosso, Amanda Lambert, Caroline Hampstead and Zary Feeney