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.
Morelos’s commission is the third by the Barbican to be staged in its public areas and the first to be done in its Sculpture Court. “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 a statement.
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. 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.”
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.
“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 of that exhibition. “There’s something very feminine, very delicate. The embrace happens literally when you get closer and feel the earth surround you.”
