Delia Beatriz: Sequedad Sobrenaturalizada

Time: museum hours

Admission: with museum entrance

Delia Beatriz reimagines the Carmelite and monastic choir traditions through the lens of “sequedad sobrenaturalizada”—the spiritual aridity central to the teachings of St. Teresa of Ávila and other Carmelite mystics. This “supernaturalized dryness” reflects the soul’s journey through darkness, where divine presence is not sensed through emotional consolation but through the disciplined will to persist beyond desire. This sound installation and original score parallels this mystical struggle with the historical resilience of women like St. Teresa, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and the 16 Carmelite nuns martyred during the French Revolution—figures who defied the Inquisition, patriarchal, colonial, and institutional oppression to forge paths of artistic, intellectual, and spiritual resistance.

The museum as a former church becomes a metaphor: its architecture and acoustics are reworked to mirror the contested spaces these women navigated—where sacred music was both a tool of colonial hegemony and a subversive vessel for syncretic beauty. The project interrogates how resonance (sonic, spiritual, and ideological) persists even in the absence of comfort, much like faith that thrives in the void of feeling. The piece underscores the enduring power of creativity and devotion—an echo of the resolute voices that continue to transform institutional confines into spaces of radical imagination and unwavering belief.