delcy morelos softens barbican's brutalist concrete with earth and spice installation

"For 'origo', Colombian artist Delcy Morelos fills the Sculpture Court of the Barbican Centre with soil, scent, darkness, and touch. Opening on May 15th, 2026, the monumental installation invites visitors to walk through tunnels made from clay, hay, seeds, and spices, creating an experience that feels like stepping inside a living body. Presented under the Barbican's public commissioning program, the project marks Morelos' first major public work in the UK and the first activation of the Sculpture Court in nearly a decade."

"Against the Barbican's vast concrete architecture, Morelos introduces a porous, fragile, and deeply tactile work. The rough surfaces of brutalism meet the warmth of earth, humidity, smell, and hand-worked matter, opening space for a quieter and more intimate way of being together. Installation view, Delcy Morelos: origo at the Barbican, London, 15 May - 31 July 2026 | all images by Barbican Art Gallery / Thomas Adank. © Delcy Morelos"

"Born in Tierralta, Colombia, in a region deeply affected by armed conflict, land extraction, and displacement, Morelos has spent decades working with earth as a living presence. Her early works used red clay pigments to explore the relationship between violence, territory, and the human body. Over time, those investigations expanded into large-scale installations that immerse viewers physically and emotionally."

"Delcy Morelos draws from ancestral Andean and Amazonian understandings of land as something alive and interconnected with human existence. Soil, for her, carries memory, care, spirituality, and labor, a philosophy that shapes every aspect of her installations, from the monumental forms she builds to the spices she incorporates into them. Cinnamon and cloves scent the work while also protecting the soil through their antifungal properties, allowing the material to remain active and healthy throughout the exhi"

Delcy Morelos fills the Barbican Centre’s Sculpture Court with soil, scent, darkness, and touch. Visitors enter tunnels made from clay, hay, seeds, and spices, creating an immersive experience that feels like stepping inside a living body. The work uses porous, fragile, deeply tactile materials that contrast with the Barbican’s concrete brutalist architecture. Earth is treated as memory, body, and relation, shaped by Morelos’s background in a region affected by armed conflict, land extraction, and displacement. Soil carries memory, care, spirituality, and labor, while cinnamon and cloves scent the installation and help protect the soil through antifungal properties, keeping it active and healthy.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine