BERLIN.- Delcy Morelos’s first institutional exhibition in Germany presents a new large-scale, site-specific work at Hamburger Bahnhof that explores sacred ancestral knowledge, regeneration, and the interconnectedness of nature and humanity. “Madre” responds to the form, light, climate, sound, and atmosphere of the exhibition space, engaging in a dialogue with the ideas and practice of Joseph Beuys, whose works are shown in the museum’s permanent exhibition. The Colombian artist has created a fragrant, fertile, and captivating work that reflects on the maternal qualities of Earth: its role as a source of life and a place of return.

Morelos’s “Madre”, composed of clay, soil, straw, hay, cinnamon, cloves, buckwheat, chia seeds and honey, invites visitors at Hamburger Bahnhof to experience an intense physical and sensorial encounter. The large-scale installation draws from various traditions and ancestral knowledge originating in the Americas, the Amazon, and beyond. Layer by layer, Morelos wove Brandenburg clay, water, and soil on a base of wood, iron, and straw to create “Madre” (Spanish for “Mother”). She works with natural materials chosen not only for their texture and scent but also for their cultural, spiritual, and political significance. Her installations evoke spaces such as wombs, tombs, or temples - places of stillness and closeness to the earth. Visitors can enter “Madre” through three wedge-like incisions reminiscent of “temazcals”, dome shaped sweat lodges constructed of adobe, cloth or stone that are used for cleansing rituals and are found throughout the Americas. The second part of the exhibition, titled “Profundis”, consists of a narrow, dark passageway made of moist, fertile soil. Its origins lie in a chapel within a monastery in Seville.

Long before European colonization in the late 15th century, the Indigenous Inca people had established a powerful empire in South America centered on the idea of unity: all life is interconnected and follows the rhythms of nature. Drawing on the worldview of the Uitoto - one of many Indigenous peoples living along the Caquetá and Putumayo rivers in the southern regions of Colombia and northern Peru in the Amazon basin - Morelos’s “warmth sculpture” evokes the Earth as a maternal force, widely known throughout the Americas as “Pachamama”. In 2010, “Pachamama” was granted legal personhood in Bolivia, though her reproductive powers have increasingly come under state control. In light of the massive rise in lithium mining and road construction, organizations are now dissociating themselves from the legal framework established to protect Earth Mother, seeing it instead as a tool for exploitation.

Morelos was born in Tierralta, Colombia - a place marked by immense biodiversity and decades of armed conflict. Indigenous communities have been particularly affected, facing the loss of lives, livelihoods and cultural identity. Morelos understands violence against people and violence against the earth as inseparable. Her work is rooted in global political and historical conditions; in landscapes, conflicts and communities. Her installations, shaped by lived experience, create spaces for remembrance and resistance. For Morelos, soil is never neutral: it bears the traces of struggle and survival, weaving together past and present, grief and renewal.

Like Joseph Beuys, who used organic matter to convey warmth and energy, Morelos treats materials as living forces. Despite conceptual overlaps, her approach differs, particularly in her minimalist formal language, which contrasts with Beuys’s. While Beuys placed his public persona at the center of his work, Morelos deliberately remains in the background. “Madre” also relates to Beuys’s concept of “social sculpture”, which sought to shape societal and spiritual life through art. Like Beuys, Morelos shares the desire to restore the spiritual bond between humans and the Earth and draws inspiration from other-than-human beings such as bees.

Born in 1967 in Tierralta and currently living in Bogotá, Colombia, Morelos has been working with painting, sculpture, and installation for over three decades. Her artistic process engages with the colonial legacy and the cosmologies of the Americas, which she describes as a weaving together of materials, elements, and knowledge. Following her earth-based work “Eva” (2012), she presented “Earthly Paradise” (2022) at the Venice Biennale. In 2024, her works were shown at Dia Chelsea in New York, the Museo Moderno in Buenos Aires, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo, and the CAAC Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville.

Following exhibitions by Naama Tsabar (12 April – 22 September 2024) and Andrea Pichl (8 November 2024 – 4 May 2025), this is the third contemporary artist presentation shown alongside the permanent Joseph Beuys collection in the Kleihueshalle at Hamburger Bahnhof.

An accompanying catalogue from the Hamburger Bahnhof series is published by Silvana Editoriale Milano (12 Euros).

The exhibition is curated by Catherine Nichols, Curator, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart; with Assistant Curator Agnes Rameder, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart.