Curator of the MACBA and Co-curator of the exhibition Nancy Holt / Dins Fora
By Marc Amat
What do we stop seeing when we fix our eyes on a specific point? How do we choose the point of view from which we see the world? Where is the boundary between inside and outside? Nancy Holt (Worcester, Massachusetts, 1938 – New York, 2014) devoted much of her artistic career to probing the unknowns hidden behind the idea of perception. Linked to the movements of land art and American conceptual art, the artist embarked on a prolific artistic career filled with visual and spatial poetry that invites viewers to delve into the fabric of hidden systems that shape the different ways of perceiving the world.
Until January 7, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) hosts Nancy Holt / Dins Fora, the first major European exhibition that explores her artistic legacy. The exhibition, in collaboration with the Bildmuseer and the Holt Smithson Foundation, brings together a wide selection of works that Holt conceived over five decades of artistic production, from 1966 to 1992. But why has no European museum until now dedicated such a retrospective to the artist? What does her work tell us? What links can we establish between the American artist and the conceptual artistic movements that took root in Catalonia?
We talk to Teresa Grandas, curator of the MACBA and co-curator of the exhibition, along with Lisa Le Feuvre, executive director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, and Katerina Pierre, director of the Bildmuseet.
Nancy Holt is not a well-known artist in Catalonia. Who was she?
She was an American artist who, from her beginnings, was very interested in the world of creation, but also in the world of science. In fact, she had a degree in biology. We contextualize her art within the American conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. It was closely linked to land art, the artistic movement that creates works in the middle of nature, with found materials and in which the landscape becomes a key element. Holt thought that a work of art should not only be contemplative and fixed, but should also include the process of creation itself, which she considered fundamental. Sometimes, the conception and construction of the work took center stage.
So much so, that many of her pieces were ephemeral.
Exactly. Many of Nancy’s pieces that have come down to us today are simply photographs. They were pieces that, after being created, ceased to have meaning or were lost to nature. In the exhibition, we’ve gathered poems, sound pieces, the artist’s books, drawings and documentation of her practices, but we have also reconstructed architectural works and exhibited her Locators, monocle-shaped sculptures with which Holt invites the viewer to play with vision, gaze and the idea of what is seen and what is not.
In fact, she defined herself as an artist of perception. What was her approach?
Yes. Perception is an element that hovers over all her artistic work. What we see, what we don’t see, the partial view, the total view, the inside, the outside… And in this interplay, the symbol of the circle takes on importance. It’s an element that appears in many of her works. I was fascinated by it. It appears in the form of holes in the pages of her visual poems; of orange dots in the middle of the natural environment; of concrete pipes in large areas of land; from monocles in her Locators; from the interplay of light, shadows and mirrors. Perception is the element that links all of her work.
How does this fixation affect her output?
It makes her work enormously political. Everything we look at, how we decide to focus our gaze and what we stop seeing when we focus on specific aspects is what determines us as individuals, as social beings, as people. We see this very clearly in some of the works included in the exhibition. In June 1967, Holt recorded herself giving a guided tour through a labyrinth garden in New Jersey. Then she transcribed it. The result was an imperfect map: she explains many things in great detail, but also fails to highlight others. A few years later, she repeated the experiment with a guided tour of the John Weber Gallery. She describes the space in minute detail, but it’s the same with a resume: no matter how meticulous they are, are they really talking about you?
Following this idea of guided tours, is this also central to her work?
Yes. The concept of travel also connects her work. She has a series of photographs of graves along a route she took in the American West that she used to immortalize the trail we leave after we’re gone: she wonders what remains of us, how we care for death and how we neglect it. From Holt’s journeys through the interstate highway network with her camera, numerous photographic series have emerged, created from the observation of specific repeating elements.
Why hasn’t her work reached us in Europe?
In general, it’s been harder to bring attention to women than it is to men. Holt was the partner of Robert Smithson, who died in a plane crash and she had to manage his estate. He was more well-known. In fact, in her diaries, she expresses with some sadness that while she often collaborated with and had close relationships with many first-rate artists like her husband, this never translated into an increased visibility for her work, nor did it result in more exhibitions or artistic collaborations. With this exhibition, we aspire to correct this lack of awareness of Holt.
In what way do her pieces connect to Catalan artistic movements?
We can draw several parallels. Fina Miralles stands in the middle of a field, as if she were a tree. This rootedness in nature has a relationship with the return of the human being to nature, but it also speaks of what position we take. She also has a work called Petjades (Footprints), in which she stamps her name on the ground as she makes a journey. Àngels Ribé has a piece where she follows a path while carrying a mirror that reflects another mirror that is at the end of the diagonal line she follows. Through the reflection of light in the mirror, she is able to transport her body to another space. We can also mention Eulàlia Grau, who takes a tour of an art gallery in Geneva. She proposes an exhibition that is simply a phone call. When the call is made, the exhibition is explained. In all of these pieces, there is a common way of doing things and common issues that concern them.
Are there any activities planned around this exhibition?
Yes. We called it Geopoétiques and it will start this November. In dialogue with the exhibition, the program will bring us closer to the universe of poets, writers and artists who reflect on the irreversible transformations of planet Earth. The authors will invite participants to confront the ethical, political and existential implications of the climate crisis, at the same time echoing its intimate and daily impact on our lives.
