PRESENTATION: Nancy Holt-Inside Outside

Nancy Holt (5/4/1938-8/2/2014) is among the most important figures of the earth, land, and conceptual art movements. A pioneer of site-specific installation and the moving image, Holt redefined the limits of art. She expanded the places where art could be found and embraced the new media of her time. Over five decades, she questioned how we might understand our place in the world, examining sites, systems, and perception.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Bildmuseet Archive

Nancy Holt expanded the places where art could be found, embracing the new media of her time. Across five decades she asked questions about how we might understand our place in the world, investigating perception, systems, and place. The exhibition “Nancy Holt / Inside Outside” explores the artist’s rich artistic legacy through a selection of works spanning 1967 to 1992. This is the first major European retrospective and most ambitious exhibition of her work to date. She produced concrete poetry, sculpture, earthworks, audioworks, film and video, photography, drawing, and room-sized installations. The exhibition occupies five floors of Bildmuseet with Holt’s “Ventilation System” (1985-92) literally moving inside and outside of the architecture of the museum. Perceptions and demarcations of being ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ guide this survey exhibition. Holt herself was an insider and an outsider: she was a key member of the Earth, Land, and Conceptual art movements, yet her work is far lesser known than that of her male peers—. Highlighting Holt’s commitment to perception, light, and space, “Nancy Holt / Inside Outside” presents a number of previously unseen photoworks. In 1973, Holt started to research her ideas for “Sun Tunnels”, creating Instamatic photo studies testing the possibilities of how vision might be focused through a sculpture located in a landscape uninterrupted by buildings and roadways. These small scale images are paired at Bildmuseet with photographs of “Sun Tunnels” by the influential photographer Richard Misrach made fifteen years later, each measuring 308 x 243 cm. Placed in the context of audio and moving image works observing travel through the North American landscape, Holt’s series “Alaskan Pines” (1986) and “Miami Puddles” (1969) are likewise exhibited for the first time. Systems fascinated Holt. She paid attention to measured and astronomical time, to language and perception, and to economics and energy. In the mid 1960s, she worked as an assistant literary editor at the magazine Harper’s Bazaar, and in 1966, she began creating concrete poems. Soon after she extended her exploration of language from the page to the landscape, guiding friends through unfamiliar sites with written scores and working with film, video, photography, and audio to recalibrate perception of natural and built environments. At the start of the 1970s, Holt created her “Locators”, sculptures made from T-shaped industrial piping to be looked through with one eye; she described the Locators as “seeing devices.” The Locators led to both her landmark earthwork project “Sun Tunnels” (1973-76) and her reflective room-sized installation “Mirrors of Light” (1973-74)—both of which are represented in this exhibition. Underpinning this twenty-five year survey is a call to look deeper and think harder about how humans try to find their place in the world through systems and vision, as well as through the systematic distinctions between ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ The exhibition launches at the time of the summer solstice when the city of Umeå, located close to the Artic Circle, has white nights echoing Holt’s consistent tracing of the sun, moon, and stars in relation to our place on the planet.

Photo: Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, 1973-76, Collection Dia Art Foundation with support from Holt/Smithson Foundation © Holt/Smithson Foundation and Dia Art Foundation, licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Info: Curators: Lisa Le Feuvre and Katarina Pierre, Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Östra Strandgatan 30B, 903 33 Umeå,  Sweeden, Duration: 17/6/2022-12/2/2023, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 12:00-17:00, www.bildmuseet.umu.se/