Victoria Law Projects presents What the Ground Holds, a presentation at Paraíso Art Fair bringing together works by Venezuelan-born, London-based artists Lucía Pizzani and José García Oliva.

Venezuela’s modern history was written in oil: in what could be drawn from the ground, and in those left to pay when the wealth ran out. Lucía Pizzani and José García Oliva grew up within that history and carry its central question into the earth itself and into the city: what are land and labour worth once they are valued only for what they yield? Both artists explore migration and ecology and belong to the Venezuelan diaspora, one of the largest in the world today.

Pizzani's subject is the earth as a body that keeps records. Like Ana Mendieta before her, she places the body against the land, but her attention goes to what the ground holds: what is sealed, compressed, extracted and remade. Her sculptures are shaped by hand in black clay and pressed with seeds and vegetation from South America, so that the land leaves its own print in the material. Almost everything on the booth is new: collages from the Acorazada series, cyanotypes, sculptures and paintings. The exception is Escritura (2020), Spanish for "writing," a major earlier work that reaches back to the origins of language through forms recalling the first uses of clay at the beginning of material culture.