The first plants that Columbus brought from America sow art in the Cartuja monastery in Seville

The smell of wet earth thickens the air inside the cloisters of the Carthusian monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas in Seville, today converted into the headquarters of the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art. Aromas of the old and new world intersect and merge in an enclave that had special significance in the eventful life of Admiral Christopher Columbus. Also in his death, just as traveling as his life, because it was one of the first places where his remains were found buried, before his transfer to Santo Domingo.

The Andalusian art center is still today a haven of Carthusian silence, with orchards where orange trees ripen, but in which these days it also smells of chili, chia and coffee, tomato and pepper – something already so Spanish, but not It always was, cinnamon and clove. It is curious that, despite the monumental installations that the Colombian Delcy Morelos (Tierralta, 1967) has built to show them in Deephis first individual exhibition in Spainthe most immediate memory after contemplating this marvelous work is olfactory.

Morelos, an artist who was the big surprise at the 2022 Venice Biennale, and who currently has his first individual exhibition in the United States at the DIA Art Foundation in New York, arrives for the first time in Spain with a single stop in Seville. And he does it with the same spirit with which he has crossed the ocean several times to present his plastic work in Europe: placing nature, the Pachamama (“mother earth” for the Quechuas), at the center of the work of him. A commitment, therefore, that turns the space on which it has intervened into a sensory feast that invites us to think about that Seville to which in the 16th century, along with shipments of gold and silver, other discoveries arrived that would take us out of our minds. hardship in times of need, like potatoes or cocoa; and that would forever modify the orography of our olfactory and sensory maps.

In Deep“the earth is placed in the place from which it should never have left,” says Delcy Morelos in front of the main altar of what was the main church of the monastery, now converted into a striking yellow curtain over which a mantle of albero slides, with which he sends a clear message: Deep It is, in addition to an exhibition of works of beautiful aesthetic impact, a project of ethical and sustainable commitment, what the museum management has wanted to call 0 kilometer art, made with local materials that has involved Andalusian artisans and farmers for several months prior to the inauguration last week.

It is an installation that has been created using local materials (the albero from the province of Seville, the red earth from Huelva and the La Janda region, in Cádiz), in line with the trajectory of Delcy Morelos in the last 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 Deep. “It seems that the monastery was predestined to receive Morelos’ work to recover a lost sensory memory,” reflects Blázquez, also 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 significance 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, which 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.

Deep 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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