BRUSSELS.- This summer, as part of the Bozar Monumental series, internationally renowned artist Delcy Morelos (b. 1967, Tierralta, Colombia) creates a new large-scale installation for Bozar’s Horta Hall. Drawing upon indigenous knowledge from her native country, Delcy Morelos creates emotionally charged artworks that speak to visitors through many senses. Shown for the first time in Brussels, Morelos’ monumental work is freely accessible at the heart of Bozar – Centre for Fine Arts of Brussels, from 28 June to 30 August 2026.

For this monumental multisensory installation, Morelos draws on mud-and-timber and wattle-and-daub, ancient techniques used in South and North America, Africa and Central Europe.

Morelos’ practice is rooted in a desire to restore connections between humans and their environment: “For me, matter is alive” she says, “Earth produces and nurtures life; it is not inert”. And she adds: “I want people to reconnect with soil, with plants and their uses.”

The large trapezoidal installation - 14 metres long and 9 metres wide – is inspired by the intertwined and complex conglomerate of organic materials in a bird’s nest. The construction is made of hazel panels, covered with a mix of local clay, sand, hay, and spices such as cinnamon and cloves.

As with all her creations, Delcy Morelos commissions a professional fragrance designer to create a specific scent for the work. For her installation at Bozar, the artist has collaborated with Givaudan to imbue the space and visitors with scents reminiscent of humid soil, wood, cinnamon and other natural oils.

Spiritual encounter

The organic materials used by the artist carry their own energies and memories, inviting communion with something beyond the visible. Invoking “Pachamama”, the Earth-Mother in Inca mythology, Morelos offers a vision of the earth as sensuous and powerful, grounded in Indigenous beliefs and ancestral knowledge.





The smell of the earth and spices trigger memories and emotions. “The piece enters your body through your nostrils”, says Morelos “and in that moment you become one with the work”. She adds: “This mound of earth is like an altar and a machine for giving affection. It’s a mountain that embraces you.”

Visitors are also encouraged to step inside the work barefoot, in direct contact with the earth, engaging in a rich sensory and spiritual journey. As Morelos notes, “Walking barefoot, fragile yet grounded. It reconnects the body to ancient memories and to the Earth.”

Morelos also invites visitors to gently caress the surfaces of her work. She explains: “To touch the earth is to be touched by her.”

Spanning half of the Horta Hall, the installation invites visitors into close proximity, offering an intense physical and sensory encounter.

To be in touch with the earth and to enter within it is to be in touch with what constitutes and nourishes us; the bedrock where life develops while it is inhabited by the soul. — Delcy Morelos

Architectural conversation

Morelos’ installation draws on the visual vocabulary of ritual structures such as mastabas, temples, and ziggurats, as well as the mountainous topographies that inspire these forms. But the artist also sees her creation at Bozar as a womb in which one can nestle and shelter. A place where one can feel a connection with greater forces: those of the life-giving earth and its memory.

The artwork also dialogues with Bozar’s art deco architecture. The opening on top allows the sunlight – streaming through the glass roof - to enter the artwork. Morelos’ warm, organic installation interacts and contrasts with the structured, geometrical Horta Hall made of marble, concrete and glass.

Through this dialogue of materials, Morelos also invites visitors to look anew at the materials that comprise the architecture of Hall Horta. Marble, which is omnipresent in the space, shares the same origin as the earth used by the artist: both come from nature, from the mountains. By bringing together these materials that seem to be opposites – marble, cold and monumental, and earth, warm and malleable – Morelos reveals their deep connection with nature and highlights the poetic power of the elements that surround us.

Deeply sensory, immersive, and introspective, the installation of Delcy Morelos encourages a shift in perception, opening a space between physical presence and inner experience. “I’m interested in liminal states, moments between consciousness and dream,” the artist adds.

Ancestral knowledge is vital for shaping a better future, as Ailton Krenak says, “If humanity has a future, it is ancestral.” — Delcy Morelos