An in-depth exploration of the pathbreaking works of the landmark artist Nancy Holt to
accompany an exhibition at Bildmuseet Umeå Sweden. Nancy Holt: Inside Outside takes a journey
through the artist's key experiments in visual art presenting works never seen before
commissioning new critical thinking and amplifying knowledge of an artist whose ideas are
fundamental to how we define art today. Over the course of fifty years Nancy Holt's rich
output spanned concrete poetry audio film and video photography drawings room-sized
installations earthworks and public sculpture. Nancy Holt: Inside Outside details her unique
and significant contributions situating an important female voice within the narratives of
land and conceptual art. Initiating her art practice in 1966 with concrete poetry she soon
expanded her ideas into the landscape large-scale installations audio and video and film.
Through each medium she explored how we understand our place in the world by investigating
perception both natural and human systems and site within and outside of traditional museum
contexts. In the mid-1970s Holt completed her most influential earthwork Sun Tunnels an
artwork central to the definition of land art. Bringing the stars down to earth Sun Tunnels
focuses attention on the systems of the universe. Holt was equally interested in the built
environment as she was natural and celestial landscapes and from the 1980s she made invisible
architectural systems visible in ambitious installations that exposed the inner workings of
buildings. Rigorous documentation of Holt's work as well as contributions by key scholars
previously unseen photoworks and drawings and a revealing never-before-published
'self-interview' by the artist bring her work into far fuller context. Developed in close
consultation with Holt Smithson Foundation an artist-endowed organization dedicated to
preserving and extending the work of Nancy Holt and her husband Robert Smithson this expansive
publication will serve as a major contribution to the critical ongoing research into the art of
our time.
