Nancy Holt: Power Systems

Nancy Holt: Power Systems features the most extensive inquiry yet into Nancy Holt’s studies of systems. The exhibition launches in summer 2024 with a presentation of Pipeline, which calls attention to the physical and economic systems powering buildings and to the impact of fossil fuel extraction.
 
Holt visited Alaska in March of 1986 at the invitation of the Visual Arts Center of Alaska, with the hope she might create a work of art in celebration of the region’s beauty. Holt was instead struck by the infiltration of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System through the landscape. In response she made Pipeline, a sculpture made of steel pipes that twist in and out of the gallery, winding down to the floor where one section of pipe leaks—an incessant drip of oil pooling thickly on a white base. Pipeline points to the unchecked audacity and devastating consequences of the energy industry.
 
In the 1980s Holt’s exploration of systems focused on the fabric of the built environment with functional sculptural installations she termed System Works. Using standard industrial materials designed for heating, ventilation, lighting, drainage—as well as the raw materials of fossil fuels and waste—the System Works are connected to internal architectural organs, calling attention to our reliance on these modern systems and their complex relationship to the natural world.
 
In early 2025, the Wex’s presentation of Nancy Holt: Power Systems expands into the galleries with additional sculptures, installations, and works on paper focused on literal and metaphorical flows of power.

IMAGE CAPTION
Nancy Holt, Pipeline (detail), 1986. Steel, oil. Installation view at the Nasher Sculpture Center, 2023. Photo: Kevin Todora. Copyright Holt/Smithson Foundation. Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.