An artist inside and outside the system
MACBA presents the most complete exhibition ever held in Europe on the work of Nancy Holt, a key figure in Land Art and site-specific art.
From 13 July to 7 January 2024, MACBA will explore the artistic legacy of Nancy Holt through the exhibition Inside Outside. This is the most ambitious and extensive exhibition ever held in Europe on this artist, in collaboration with Bildmuseet of the Swedish University of Umea and the Holt/Smithson Foundation of Santa Fe, in the United States..
Born in Massachusetts in 1938, Nancy Holt was a key figure on the New York art scene, especially in the field of installation and moving image. Perception and the boundaries between inside and outside constitute the guiding thread of the exhibition, which has been curated by Teresa Grandas, Lisa Le Feuvre and Katarina Pierre. The artist herself was both inside and outside the art system, as her work never achieved the recognition that other male artists of her time did, an anomaly that she now seeks to rectify.
The exhibition brings together a wide selection of works by this pioneer of Land Art and site-specific installations made between 1966 and 1992, including film, video, photography, concrete poetry, sound works, sculpture and large-scale installations, as well as drawings and documentation of her projects. Among others, previously unpublished images from the series Miami Puddles (1969), Alaskan Pines and Athabascan/Russian Orthodox Graveyards (1986) will be on view, as well as the first posthumous recreation of Ventilation System, a playful sculpture belonging to the System Works series that will occupy various interior and exterior floors of the building in a dialogue with the architecture of MACBA.
In the early 1970s, Nancy Holt created the Locators, sculptures made of industrial steel tubes in the shape of a T. They were a precursor to other large-scale 'environmental projects', such as the reflective installation Mirrors of Light (1973-1974), which occupies the entire exhibition space. They were the precursor to other large-scale 'environmental projects', such as the reflective installation Mirrors of Light (1973-1974), which occupies the entire exhibition space.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication of the same title with texts by Karen di Franco and James Nisbet, together with an essay by MACBA curator Teresa Grandas.
Tickets to see the exhibition cost 10.8 euros and can be purchased in advance at this link.