Film screening at Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles
On the occasion of the exhibition Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, we presented a special screening event on April 9, 2026 at Sprüth Magers. Nancy Holt’s influential 1978 film Sun Tunnels was shown alongside the 1971 film Swamp, co-authored with Robert Smithson. Following the screening, Lisa Le Feuvre, our Executive Director, offered reflections on Holt’s enduring relevance as a filmmaker.
The event marked the Los Angeles premiere of a newly restored digital scan of Swamp, produced through a collaboration between Holt/Smithson Foundation and The Museum of Modern Art to preserve Holt and Smithson’s moving-image work. Swamp probes the mechanics of perception through sight, foregrounding the limits of technology as a substitute for human vision. Sun Tunnels documents the making of Holt’s landmark earthwork of the same name in Utah’s Great Basin Desert, revealing her deep trust in, and respect for, the skilled labor that brought the work into being.
Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels [still] (1978)
16 mm film
Color, sound
Duration: 26 minutes, 31 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York
