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Delcy Morelos

Issue 249 - March 2025

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Frieze

Cinnamon, cloves, cocoa, tobacco: you'll smell Deley Morelos's works before you see them.

- Edmée Lepercq

Delcy Morelos

For more than three decades, the Colombian artist has scented the soil in her large-scale installations to engage with our relationship to the earth. The significance of this gesture is made explicit in 'De Profundis', her current exhibition at Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC) in Seville, a river city central to the development of international trade routes and colonies between the 15th and 17th centuries.

Arranged across four rooms of the deconsecrated monastery that now houses CAAC, the sole and titular installation, Profundis (2024), comprises locally harvested sediments red soil from Huelva, clay and albero sand from north of the city mixed with other natural materials, such as hay, jute, wood, latex, spices, seeds and plants. By blending local earths with specimens that Christopher Columbus introduced to Europe from the Americas, Morelos alludes to the history of colonial botany.

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