The Barbican in London will stage the first commission with Delcy Morelos in the United Kingdom from May 15th to July 31st, 2026. The commission will involve Morelos’s “most ambitious sculptural installation to date,” which is an oval-shaped pavilion made of soil, clay, spices, and plant materials that will be approximately 78 feet in circumference.
In a statement, Anastasia Bukhman, the commission’s lead philanthropic supporter, 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. We believe that access to art that is bold, ambitious, and profound is essential to widening creative opportunity, nurturing the next generation of artists and cultural leaders, and inspiring the wider public.”
Sited in the Barbican’s outdoor sculpture courtyard, the piece will be the third by Morelos to be held in the Barbican’s public areas.
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“Our public realm commissions invite artists to respond to the Barbican’s iconic brutalist architecture, whilst inviting our audiences to experience new work across our spaces. Morelos’ installation brings back our Sculpture Court to its original purpose in the most incredible way,” Devyani Saltzman, the Barbican’s director for arts and participation, said in the statement.
Morelos has created similar immersive installations in the past, including one for the 2022 Venice Biennale and for a solo installation at the Dia Art Foundation in New York in 2023. In the Dia exhibition, Morelos created a work called El abrazo (The Embrace), in which viewers could enter a V-shaped alcove and seemingly be enveloped in a hug by the earth.
“This is made of earth—it’s so fragile. It has size and magnitude, but it also has a humility in the materials and a fragility,” she told ARTnews regarding that exhibition. “There’s something very feminine, very delicate. The embrace happens literally when you get closer and feel the earth surround you.”
