The Earth’s Embrace: Delcy Morelos and the Radical Act of Listening to Soil
There’s something profoundly humbling about standing inside a 30-tonne earthwork. It’s not just the sheer scale of it—though that’s undeniably impressive—but the way it forces you to reconsider your place in the world. Personally, I think Delcy Morelos’ installations are more than art; they’re a wake-up call. Her latest work, Origo, opening at the Barbican in London, is a 24-metre-wide ovular pavilion made entirely of soil. But what makes this particularly fascinating is how it challenges our relationship with the earth. It’s not just dirt underfoot; it’s a living, breathing entity that sustains us.
What many people don’t realize is that Morelos’ work is deeply rooted in the Andean cosmovision, a worldview that treats mountains, rivers, and soil as sentient beings. This isn’t just a philosophical stance—it’s a radical shift in perspective. When she says, ‘If you hurt her, you hurt me, you hurt yourself,’ she’s not being poetic; she’s stating a truth that’s been buried under centuries of extractivist culture. In my opinion, this is where her art becomes transformative. It’s not about admiring a sculpture; it’s about feeling a connection to something greater than yourself.
One thing that immediately stands out is the sensory experience of her installations. The scent of clove and cinnamon in The Womb Space in Mexico City, for instance, transports visitors to their childhoods, to memories of playing in the dirt. A woman in her 70s whispered, ‘It smells like my ranch!’—a detail that I find especially interesting because the soil was actually sourced from her region. This isn’t just art; it’s a time machine, a portal to a primal, unfiltered connection with the earth.
But here’s the thing: Morelos isn’t just recreating nostalgia. She’s dismantling the idea that soil is a resource to be exploited. Her work is a direct response to the colonial mindset that sees the earth as property, a concept that Yásnaya Aguilar aptly describes as a product of colonization. What this really suggests is
