Collaboration was a significant aspect of Nancy Holt’s artistic practice. During the 1970s, the artist Carl Andre was a frequent correspondent, and several of Holt’s concrete poems consist of texts composed through letters, postcards, and faxes sent to Andre. Their close personal and artistic relationship is also reflected in the 1972 concrete poem collage Chinese Dinner, in which Andre appears as one of four guests alongside Holt, Robert Smithson, and Angela Westwater Reaves. A further example can be found in the video sculpture Points of View (1974), which features Andre in conversation with the artist Ruth Kligman.

This work incorporates a 1970 advertisement for a light bulb that compares the strength of the brand’s illumination to that of the sun. The advertising copy describes an experiment in which light bulbs were tested in Inuit homes in Resolute Bay, an Arctic waterway in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. Holt dedicates the poem to Andre in typewritten text, accompanied by her handwritten initials.