Europa Point depicts a 1970s postcard of the Strait of Gibraltar against a black backdrop. Smoke begins to cloud the shot as the card burns seemingly from behind. The edges begin to curl, blacken, then burst into a few seconds of brilliant flame as the heat meets the chemical ink. When the flame dies, we are left with the embers and a discoloured, ashen card: its parts slowly break apart like continental drift in time-lapse. As a far outpost of Europe facing Africa, sitting at the gate between the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, the Strait in this work is synecdochical for political and geographic boarders imbued with tragedy. But Lagomarsino declines the ease of straight melancholy: in the almost entirely ashen card, the letters of ‘Europa’ can be made out. He leaves room for renewal.
