Afterheat – When Earth Gives Back Light
Pia Isaia, Livia De Magistris
A duo exhibition of ceramics by Pia Isaia and Livia De Magistris, in which clay transformed by fire returns its energy as light.
In the warmth that lingers after fire, matter finds new balance.
Afterheat – When Earth Gives Back Light explores how clay, once transformed by flame, returns energy as illumination. The exhibition brings together the ceramic practices of Pia Isaia and Livia De Magistris in a shared narrative of migration, transformation, and belonging. Their works form two complementary stories: Isaia represents arrival; De Magistris embodies the journey.
Pia Isaia: Acts of Permanence
Isaia’s tripod lamps exist as acts of grounding. The third leg — solid and stable — becomes a trusted guide, allowing the form to stand after a long journey. Her glazed ceramic reflects time, while the light of recycled bulbs becomes living memory: a bridge between what was and what is still being built, between the past and a present searching for home. The search for stability is tangible, almost physical — a necessary weight that holds light and anchors it to the earth.
Livia De Magistris: Creatures in Motion
De Magistris’s hybrid beings tell of the run. Post-human creatures blur the boundaries between gender, animal and human, escape and desire. Their bodies reveal matter in constant transformation — fluid and unstable, like contemporary identity itself. These imperfect, vital figures reclaim their right to exist, to belong to a world without fixed borders, where hybridity becomes a language and a possibility of freedom.
Her sculptures intertwine with illustration in a hybrid narration made of clay, monotype, and pastel on paper. The drawings frame each character before the run. We do not know what they flee from or where they are heading, but through them we sense that their race is a need, not a choice.
Clay as language
In both practices, clay — primal, fragile, and enduring — becomes a story of adaptation and rebirth. The works complete each other: De Magistris’s hybrid beings seem to find in Isaia’s tripods a moment of rest, as if they were trees offering shade before the next departure, while the tripods draw new energy from the creatures, recalling the thrill of constant transformation.
Afterheat is the threshold: what remains of fire, its energy transformed — heat that no longer burns, but gives back light as an act of memory and life.
Public programme
- Saturday 1 November 2025, 16:00–20:00 — Opening reception with the artists.
- Sunday 2 November 2025, 14:00–17:00 — Workshop: Archaeological Shapes.
- Wednesday 5 November 2025, 19:00 — Finissage and round table: After Exhibition, What Now?
Credits
Artists: Pia Isaia, Livia De Magistris. Curated by Elisa Basilissi Lefebvre .
Afterheat was a Berlin-based project by Karne Kunst gUG, under the artistic direction of Marcela Villanueva , and was presented at Bardo Projektraum, Berlin.