The Barbican has announced the first UK public commission by Colombian artist Delcy Morelos (b. 1967). Situated within the striking setting of the Barbican’s outdoor Sculpture Court, the site-specific temporary installation will explore our relationship to earth and celebrate the power and vibrancy of soil, the material which sustains all life.
Morelos creates multisensory immersive environments that invite us to convene with the earth and reorient our relationship to land. For the Barbican, Morelos has designed her most ambitious outdoor work to date, an ovular pavilion made of clay, soil, fragrant spices and plant materials, spanning a circumference of roughly 24 metres. Visitors will be invited to enter and circulate the artwork, become part of its ecosystem, experience its shifting light and fragrant smells and rest within its inner courtyard.
The artwork responds to the Barbican’s iconic cement architecture through its minimalist geometry and its organic materiality. Morelos’ unique worldview, which is informed by ancestral knowledge from South America, will be put into direct dialogue with the utopic, humanist values that underpin the Barbican Estate, a dialogue that is crystallised in the relationship between soil and cement.
Throughout the Barbican’s history, the Sculpture Court has been the backdrop for celebrated exhibitions, concerts by the London Symphonic Orchestra and the Barbican’s Outdoor Cinema programme.
The installation marks a return to large-scale artistic commissions in the Sculpture Court for the first time in 10 years and realises an integral strand of the Barbican’s renewed Artistic Vision which focuses on supporting artists in the creation and presentation of groundbreaking new work.
“We are thrilled to be presenting Delcy Morelos’ work at the Barbican, building on the launch of our public realm commissions with Ranjani Shettar’s 2023 installation in our Conservatory, Cloud songs on the horizon, and Ibrahim Mahama’s iconic wrapping of the Barbican in 2024’s Purple Hibiscus. Led by our incredible Head of Visual Arts, Shanay Jhaveri, and our wonderful teams, 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, Director for Arts and Participation at the Barbican,
Commissioning at the Barbican
The Barbican has been commissioning international artists to make bold new work inside The Curve gallery since 2006. More recently, this ambitious programme has expanded beyond the gallery walls into the Barbican’s public realm, with Ranjani Shettar’s Cloud songs on the horizon in the Barbican Conservatory in 2023, and Ibrahim Mahama’s Purple Hibiscus, which transformed the Barbican’s Lakeside Terrace in 2024.
Commissioning artists sits at the heart of the Barbican’s Artistic Vision, with a renewed commitment to enabling artists to realise their most ambitious ideas and presenting them, free of charge, to the widest possible audience. To make this possible, we are establishing the Barbican Commissioning Council: an engaged group of passionate supporters who share our belief in the importance of this work. Their vital contribution will enable this programme to flourish and ensure it reaches the many thousands of visitors to the Barbican each year. Special thanks to the founding members of the Commissioning Council: Anastasia Bukhman/Bukhman Foundation, Stephanie Camu, Aarti Lohia/SP Lohia Foundation, Mark & Dana Strong, and Tia Collection.
Delcy Morelos, 15th May – 31st July 2026, Barbican’s outdoor Sculpture Court
About the artist
Born in 1967 in Tierralta in the region of Córdoba in Colombia, Delcy Morelos studied at the Cartagena School of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Bogotá. Solo exhibitions include Profundis, CAAC Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain (2024); Interwoven, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO (2024); El Abrazo, Dia Chelsea, New York (2023); El lugar del alma, Museo Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Enie, Fundación NC-Arte, Bogotá (2018); Inner Earth, Röda Sten Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden (2018). Morelos was awarded the Pérez Prize in Public Art & Civic Design (2024) and the ARTnews Awards Established Artist of the Year (2024).
