Nancy Holt's Waterwork is one of her System Works, a series that makes visible the systems that shape everyday experience. Created for the campus of Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C., a university for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students, the sculpture responds to the topography of the site while revealing the infrastructure that carries water through the urban environment.

In 1982, Nancy Holt created Catch Basin for St. James Park in Toronto as part of the Citysite Sculpture Project, a short-lived initiative by Visual Arts Ontario dedicated to introducing the city’s residents to new concepts in contemporary art. Developing from her System Works, Holt described the sculpture as “a land drainage system, evolved out of my recent concern with exposing and utilizing functional systems, which are usually hidden beneath the surfaces of our existence.