Air

Nancy Holt Born 1938, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States; died 2014, New York, United States Industrial piping crisscrosses the room, wrapping around the architecture and appearing to plumb into the walls and floor. Encountering Nancy Holt’s Ventilation System 1985–92 is like inadvertently wandering into a back- of-house area of the museum, with the work’s plainly utilitarian language distancing it from conventional sculpture. At points, the interconnected lengths of stainless-steel ducting are punctuated by a turbine, or shanty cap. Up close, it becomes clear the network is channelling air — that most evanescent of substances, and a material Holt lists, like any other, in the caption for the work. As the turbines spin, their silvery blades catch the light and the work comes to life — a breathing system, its unabashed functionality is made more wondrous by its unexpected presence in the gallery. First conceived in 1985, Ventilation System belongs to Holt’s ‘System Works’, a body of site-specific artworks that make visible the extensive hidden infrastructure we rely upon for our everyday existence. Usually found underground, within the interstitial spaces of buildings or, as Holt remarked, ‘relegated to the realm of the unconscious’, these conduit systems are brought into plain sight by the artist, their humble operations foregrounded and exposed. 1 Espousing a truth to materials, Holt explained how her ‘SystemWorks’ are fabricated from the standard components of each industrial system, and follow their prescribed purpose: the sculptures are functional — the electrical systems light, the heating systems heat, the drainage systems drain, the ventilation systems circulate air and so on . . . Since the sculptures are fragments of vast hidden networks, they are part of open-ended systems, part of the world. 2 1 Nancy Holt, quoted in ‘Nancy Holt, Ventilation Series’, in Alena J Williams (ed.) Nancy Holt: Sightlines , University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif., 2011, p.144. 2 Holt, quoted in Williams. Nancy Holt / Ventilation System 1985–92 (installation view, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden 2022) 139 Burn