Is a Utopia inherently unachievable? Artists, scientists, and researchers strive to bring their ideals to life for real in their studios, laboratories, and workshops. Bozar actively fosters synergies between these creators of the real and their resulting productions. In 2025, Delcy Morelos will embark on a research project to explore the potential parallels between today’s sustainable design and ancestral building techniques. In 2026, the artist will be our guest for the – now regular – Summer installation in the Hall Horta. In Autumn 2026, a Close-up will be dedicated to Pauline Julier, whose work associates scientific knowledge, rituals, and myths.
How can we align our thoughts with ecological priorities?
How do you navigate the world? What are your landmarks and your heritage? Using her multimedia work and documented films, Swiss visual artist and film-maker Pauline Julier (b. 1981) delves into ecology and examines the relationship(s) between humans and their environment through a series of tales, rituals, knowledge, and images.
Today, how can we reflect and react in a way that embraces socio-ecological issues? Like an adventurer travelling through space to the mountains of Mars, Julier charts possible paths, some rougher than others. Along her voyage, the slightest element has its own importance and impacts others. Rather than unravelling these links, the artist stitches them together into new stories. She fosters connections between sciences, arts, and research, and between different ideological and cultural visions of the living world.
For the last ten years, Julier’s installations and films have featured in art centres and festivals worldwide. This autumn, she mainly participates in exhibitions in Switzerland: at the Kunsthaus Aargauer in Aarau andthe Musée des Beaux-Arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Afterwards, her work will be on display at Art Genève in February 2025.
Pauline Julier delves into ecology and examines the relationship(s) between humans and their environment through a series of tales, rituals, knowledge, and images.
A Large Work of Straw
For the past three decades, Delcy Morelos (1967, Colombia) has incorporated painting, installation and sculpture in her work, employing natural materials including earth, clay, fabrics, and fibres. In her large-scale installations, earthy aromas often combined with cinnamon and cloves are prominent. These smells usher visitors to the heart of ‘Mother Earth’. As a nurturing, feminine power, the Earth represents a genuine source of life and spirituality for Morelos.
From 2025 onwards, Bozar will invite an artist to occupy the Hall Horta every summer. Morelos will create the 2026 Summer installation. For this new piece, Morelos will draw on ancient building techniques such as that employed by the Kogi indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin to establish a parallel with their re-use in European architecture. Whilst acknowledging the fundamental role of symbiosis in maintaining an ecological balance and securing the sustainability of our ecosystems, Morelos hopes to work on sustainable design, bio-sourced construction, and more particularly, straw architecture, which served as inspiration during a field trip to Flanders in the spring of ‘24.
Delcy Morelos is currently exhibiting her sculpture entitled El abrazo at the Dia Art Foundation (Chelsea, NYC, USA) and her piece Profundis can be seen at the Dhondt-Daenens Museum (Deurle, Belgium) until October 2024 and at the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art (Seville, Spain) until March 2025.
In Delcy Morelos' large-scale installations, earthy aromas often combined with cinnamon and cloves are prominent.
The European Program Studiotopia
Building on the first edition, Studiotopia 2.0: Enter the Symbiocene with Arts and Science brings together the competencies and resources of a range of sectors to develop a series of artist residencies, exhibitions, projections, conferences, and workshops on the potential links between the arts and the environment over the period 2024-2027. The aim consists of forging a stronger symbiosis between humanity, nature, culture, and technology. This collaborative European project encompasses 11 cultural and creative institutions, including Bozar, one of its founding members.