The full title of this article by Maximiliano Durón (ARTnews) is “Delcy Morelos to Stage Major Public Art Commission at Barbican in London This Spring.” Morelos is from the Caribbean region of Tierralta, in Córdoba, Colombia. According to the Barbican, “The large-scale multi-sensory installation will respond to the Barbican’s brutalist architecture, inviting visitors to explore the relationship between humans and their surrounding environment.”
As part of its upcoming spring program, the Barbican in London will stage a major commission by artist Delcy Morelos, her first in the United Kingdom.
For the commission, on view May 15 to July 31, Morelos will construct her most ambitious sculptural installation to date. Measuring around 78 feet in circumference, the new work, to be sited in the Barbican’s outdoor sculpture courtyard, will take the form of an oval-shaped pavilion made of soil, clay, spices, and plant materials. [. . .]
The London-based Bukhman Foundation, founded by Anastasia Bukhman, a new addition to 2025 edition of ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list, is the commission’s lead philanthropic supporter.
In a statement, Bukhman said that Morelos’s work, “rooted in earth, materiality, and ancestral wisdom, finds a perfect home in this exceptional space. Through her immersive vision, she invites us not only to see, but to feel and inhabit the very substance of the world.”
[. . .] Over the past few years, Morelos has become known for creating such installations, as she did for the 2022 Venice Biennale and for a solo installation at the Dia Art Foundation in New York in 2023. For the latter exhibition, Morelos was awarded the inaugural ARTnews Award in the category Established Artist of Year.
One of the works in her Dia exhibition was titled El abrazo (The embrace). For that installation, viewers would enter a V-shaped alcove and seemingly be given a hug by the earth. Viewers were encouraged to touch the earth that was embedded in it. [. . .]
Delcy Morelos (bio excerpt from the Marion Goodman Gallery): Born in 1967 in Tierralta in the region of Córdoba in Colombia, Delcy Morelos studied at the Cartagena School of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Bogotá. Her practice is rooted in ancestral Andean cosmovision and the aesthetics of Minimal Art. Morelos’ abstract works, with their formidable evocations, inspire rumination on the interplay between human beings and earth, the human body and materiality.
In her early works, Morelos focused primarily on painting, applying natural red pigments to paper. Her chromatic research directed her attention to the intersection between body and violence. Over time, her material investigations extended into ceramics and textiles, and this work, along with her continued use of natural materials such as earth, clay, fabric, and plant fibers, led her to gradually develop a more sculptural practice, and, more recently, large-scale multisensory installations.
For full article, see https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/delcy-morelos-barbican-london-commission-1234769400/
See more on the exhibition at https://www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/delcy-morelos-to-present-major-new-outdoor-commission-at-the-barbican
Also see more on the artist at https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/394-delcy-morelos/
[Photo above by Don Stahl: Delcy Morelos during the installation of El abrazo (The Embrace), 2023, at Dia Chelsea, New York.]
The full title of this article by Maximiliano Durón (ARTnews) is “Delcy Morelos to Stage Major Public Art Commission at Barbican in London This Spring.” Morelos is from the Caribbean region of Tierralta, in Córdoba, Colombia. According to the Barbican, “The large-scale multi-sensory installation will respond to the Barbican’s brutalist architecture, inviting visitors to explore the relationship