The first vegetation that Columbus introduced from America sow artwork within the Cartuja monastery in Seville | Culture | EUROtoday

The odor of moist earth thickens the air contained in the cloisters of the Carthusian monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas in Seville, immediately transformed into the headquarters of the Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art. Aromas of the previous and new world intersect and merge in an enclave that had particular significance within the eventful lifetime of Admiral Christopher Columbus. Also in his loss of life, simply as touring as his life, as a result of it was one of many first locations the place his stays had been discovered buried, earlier than his switch to Santo Domingo.

The Andalusian artwork middle continues to be immediately a haven of Carthusian silence, with orchards the place orange bushes ripen, however through which as of late it additionally smells of chili, chia and low, tomato and pepper – one thing already so Spanish, however not It all the time was, cinnamon and clove. It is curious that, regardless of the monumental installations that the Colombian Delcy Morelos (Tierralta, 1967) has constructed to indicate them in Profundishis first particular person exhibition in Spain, essentially the most speedy reminiscence after considering this portentous work is olfactory.

Morelos, an artist who was the massive shock on the 2022 Venice Biennale, and who presently has his first particular person exhibition within the United States on the DIA Art Foundation in New York, arrives for the primary time in Spain with a single cease in Seville. And he does it with the identical spirit with which he has crossed the ocean a number of instances to current his plastic work in Europe: inserting nature, the Pachamama (“mother earth” for the Quechuas), on the middle of the work of him. A dedication, subsequently, that turns the area on which it has intervened right into a sensory feast that invitations us to consider that Seville to which within the sixteenth century, together with shipments of gold and silver, different discoveries arrived that will take us out of our minds. hardship in instances of want, like potatoes or cocoa; and that will ceaselessly modify the orography of our olfactory and sensory maps.

In Profundis“the earth is placed in the place from which it should never have left,” says Delcy Morelos in entrance of the primary altar of what was the primary church of the monastery, now transformed right into a hanging yellow curtain over which a mantle of albero slides, with which he sends a transparent message: Profundis It is, along with an exhibition of works of gorgeous aesthetic affect, a undertaking of moral and sustainable dedication, what the museum administration has wished to name kilometer 0 artwork, made with native supplies that has concerned Andalusian artisans and farmers for a number of months previous to the inauguration final week.

It is an set up that has been created utilizing native supplies (the albero from the province of Seville, the pink earth from Huelva and the La Janda area, in Cádiz), according to the trajectory of Delcy Morelos within the final decade, “where the land occupies a fundamental space. And it has had young students from the University of Fine Arts of Seville, who have been able to participate in the production, having the opportunity to be nourished by the work of an established artist like Delcy Morelos and feel part of the gestation of her work,” as he explains. the director of the center, Jimena Blázquez.

The visible roots, the new leaves, the explosion of the shoots of the first plants that Columbus brought to Spain from America are, therefore, the ingredients that make up Profundis. “It seems that the monastery was predestined to receive Morelos' work to recover a lost sensory memory,” displays Blázquez, additionally curator of the exhibition.

Morelos, for her part, invites you to visit the exhibition—“To live this experience,” as she expressly defines—in silence, as is also mandatory in a space in which silence is part of its DNA. Also in a semi-dark environment, in which the viewer “details of the work are revealed as their eyes become accustomed to the semi-darkness,” says Morelos as she walks through the exhibition, surprised “at the fertility of the land.” Andalusian”, which will cause the work to modify, at least that is what he hopes, with the passage of time: “Some pieces will emerge.”

Delcy Morelos found in this “sacred” place, which is both inside and outside of Seville, the perfect space to give this new work that spiritual character that dominates all her work. In the Cartuja monastery there is also the first tree in America, planted by Hernando Colón, son of the admiral, with seeds from the American continent. An ombú, a Guaraní word that means “he who attracts the rain” and that takes on a special meaning in a city with great arid seasons like Seville. “That tree is a God, a God of the earth, and that is why I wanted to search for the sacred and return its religious and ancestral character to this environment.”

This space that was a pottery during the Almohad era, a Carthusian monastery until the confiscation of Mendizábal, a fine earthenware factory for the British firm Pickman in the 19th century and the current Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art, is now also “a temple where the land expresses itself.” ”, nature as “the mirror of what we are. The human being is living earth: I am a body, I am earth,” reflects the Colombian artist, so small that sometimes she seems to disappear within her immense plant installations.

Profundis It can be seen at the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art until spring of next year, 2025, when Delcy Morelos hopes that the plants have made “their own evolution”, so she invites you to walk through it several times, at different times of the year.

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