Groundswell: Women of Land Art is an exhibition of women sculptors in the land art movement. Organized by the Nasher’s Leigh Arnold, the show will recast the dominant macho narrative of the movement with historical material, recreations, and new commissions by twelve female artists. The exhibition aims to significantly broaden public understanding of land art beyond the earthworks of the mid-1960s by artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, and to focus on practices at the fertile intersection between land art, public art and feminism. No Man’s Land brings together proposals, documentation photographs and films of important land art installations by artists such as Nancy Holt, Agnes Denes, Ana Mendieta, Michelle Stuart, Beverly Pepper, Patricia Johanson and others. The exhibition highlights the specific contributions of woman artists who participated in critically altering the boundaries of art, shifting the emphasis from object to experience to this monumental shift, and raises important questions about their relative invisibility in the current art historical account of the period.
Groundswell: Women of Land Art
Alice Aycock (American, born 1946), Maze, 1972. 12-sided wooden structure of 5 concentric dodecagonal rings, broken by 19 points of entry and 17 barriers 6 x 32 feet diameter (1.8 x 9.7 m). Originally sited at Gibney Farm near New Kingston, Pennsylvania (destroyed) © Alice Aycock Photo: Silver Spring Township Police Department, Mechanicsburg, PA, courtesy of the artist
Nancy Holt (American, 1938–2014) Pipeline, 1986 Installation at the Visual Arts Center of Alaska, Anchorage Steel, oil Overall dimensions variable [site responsive] © 2023 Holt/Smithson Foundation / License
Agnes Denes (American, born Hungary, 1931). Wheatfield—A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan—with Statue of Liberty across the Hudson, 1982. Two acres of wheat planted and harvested by the artist on the Battery Park landfill, Battery Park City, New York © Agnes Denes, Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
Alice Aycock (American, born 1946), Untitled (Shanty), 1978. Wood 10 1/4 × 9 × 4 1/2 feet (3.1 x 2.7 x 1.3 m) Whitney Museum of American Art; gift of Raymond J. Learsy, 84.71.1a-d © Alice Aycock Photo: Sheldan C. Collins, Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art
Lita Albuquerque (American, born 1946) Spine of the Earth,1980. Pigment, rock, and wood sundial, El Mirage Lake, Mojave Desert, California © Lita Albuquerque Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles
Mary Miss (American, born 1944) Battery Park Landfill, 1973. Wood 5 ½ x 12 feet sections installed at 50-foot intervals Temporary installation in the space that was the landfill that became Battery Park City Courtesy of the artist © Mary Miss
Beverly Pepper, Dallas Land Canal and Hillside, 1971-72.
Cor-Ten steel, earth, and grass. 60 x 70 x 2832 inches.
Agnes Denes, Rice/Tree/Burial with Time Capsule, 1968-79. Commissioned by Artpark, Lewiston, New York © 1968-79 Agnes Denes.
Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Maroya), 1982. Black and white photograph, 10 x 8 inches. © Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.
Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Maroya), 1982. Black and white photograph, 10 x 8 inches. © Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.
Patricia Johanson, Fair Park Lagoon, Dallas, Texas, 1981.
Gunite and native plantings, site-specific installation. Photo: Michael Barera
Maren Hassinger, Performance of Pink Trash, 1982. Performance in Central Park, Van Corlandt Park, and Prospect Park, New York
Performance documentation courtesy Horace Brockington.
Mary Miss, Field Rotation, 1980-81. Site-specific installation Governors State University, Park Forest South, Il. ©Mary Miss.
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”