The Colombian artist Delcy Morelos describes her hometown of Tierralta as “a paradise full of butterflies and unpaved streets.” In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Morelos spent her days in her grandmother’s garden, running barefoot and gleaning what it meant to live in connection with the land. When paramilitary and guerrilla troops moved in, though, the region was plunged into a chaotic state of grief and fear.
In her earliest works, Morelos translated the death and destruction plaguing her home into two-dimensional compositions. As she details in a new segment for Art21, acrylic painting was not long her primary mode of working, and quickly, she returned to the earth, incorporating soil, straw, and grass into large-scale installations. The film follows the artist as she installs a sepulchral mound in Seville’s Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, a former Carthusian monastery turned art museum that once housed Christopher Columbus’ remains.
Throughout the film, we witness Morelos grab gobs of straw-laden soil and affix the chunky material to a standing structure, which eventually grows a range of produce native to both sides of the Atlantic. In contrast to the space’s colonial ties, the artist’s work presents a way of creating and living that’s entwined in natural rhythms. Visitors are greeted by notes of cinnamon, cloves, and fecund soil before being enveloped by towering walls of growth. Within the vaulted monastery, Morelos’ indomitable forms offer a direct tie to the sacred and divine right beneath our feet.
“Many people believe they are in a bubble, and that is why they can do things that harm nature, harm others, and also harm themselves,” she says, demonstrating a profound sense of care for and connection to all that gives life.
This segment is part of Art21’s Human Nature episode and is available to watch on its site. Find additional films on YouTube.
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