Air

The massive steely contortions of Ventilation System give visible form to the air that already exists and circulates, almost imperceptibly, throughout our built environment. The startling clarity of the work’s premise — a lens brought to something that is too often and too easily overlooked — calls our attention to a network as enigmatic as the celestial phenomena illuminated by Holt in her acclaimed Land Art work Sun Tunnels 1973–76. 3 As we journey through the installation, our awareness of Ventilation System ’s unseen potential is heightened by the gusts of air we feel, an interactive dimension that the artist welcomed: ‘I like the idea of potential participatory involvement; I think it increases the sensation of the elements flowing through the work’. 4 In configuring various iterations, Holt took care to tie the work as closely as possible to any existing ventilation systems within the building, mimicking their logic and continuing the impression of air flow, either between rooms or from indoors to outdoors. The work strikes an ingenious balance between function and fiction, with some conduits penetrating the wall and others only simulating it. This playfulness — born of elements that, while redundant, look operational — introduces a deliberate contradictory tension, as Holt remarked: ‘I intend the work to be practical yet playful, functional yet not really necessary, a part of the architecture yet part of the outdoor environment as well’. 5 The QAGOMA iteration is the second posthumous presentation of Ventilation System , its site-responsiveness requiring some extrapolation of the artist’s ideas within the parameters she established for the work during her lifetime. The early environmental consciousness that shaped the ‘SystemWorks’ from their conception in 1982 remains key, however, and is consistent with Nancy Holt’s belief that: while continuing to meet our immediate material needs, the channelling of energy and elements of the earth can be done intelligently with the long‑term benefit of the planet in mind. In doing so we become nature’s agents rather than nature’s aggressors. 6 NM 3 In employing cylindrical pipes, the ‘System Works’ share other formal symmetries with the Sun Tunnels ; circles and cylinders being a foundational aesthetic and conceptual cornerstone in Holt’s practice. Comparing the ‘System Works’ and Sun Tunnels , Lucy Lippard has written how: ‘In both instances, she seeks to reveal natural and artificial systems that are essential to everyday life’; see Lucy Lippard, ‘Tunnel visions: Nancy Holt’s art in the public eye’, in Williams p.68. 4 Holt, quoted in Joan Marter, ‘Systems – A conversation with Nancy Holt’, Sculpture , October 2013, vol.32, no.8, p.31. 5 Holt, quoted in Marter, p.31. 6 Holt, quoted in Pamela M Lee, ‘Art as a social system: Nancy Holt and the second-order observer’, in Williams, p.56. Nancy Holt / Ventilation System 1985–92 (installation views, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden 2022) 141 140 Burn Burn