Holt visited Alaska in March of 1986 upon invitation from the Visual Arts Center of Alaska in Anchorage, who hoped she might create a work of art in celebration of the region’s beauty. Holt was instead struck by the infiltration of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline through pristine wilderness. In July of 1986 Holt returned to Alaska to create the System Work Pipeline in response. The steel pipes of the structure twist in and out of the gallery and visually penetrate through the building to the interior space below.

Nancy Holt created this concrete poem along with two System Works in response to the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline in 1986. The facts and figures of the pipeline’s operation snake along the oil’s route; to read them one must shift positions, a physical disturbance that accentuates the discomfort of the information itself.

After creating Pipeline at the Visual Arts Center of Alaska Anchorage in July, Holt created Pipeline II at the Fairbanks Arts Association in Fairbanks, which was on display from September 5 to 28, 1986. The primary materials of both Pipeline works are steel and oil, but the work extends beyond the gallery space and calls attention to the architecture and systems of the buildings in which they were exhibited.