First Look: Rhonda Holberton

• PUBLICATION Art in America
• DATE April 2015
• PDF cecimoss.com

Excerpt / Rhonda Holberton examines military practice in order to consider how technology is used to view, read and track humans. In her earlier works, Holberton, who lives in Oakland, Calif., attempted to collapse the distance between herself and obscure sites of nuclear testing and research. For As Close As I Can Get (2012), part of the body of work she produced while pursuing an MFA at Stanford, she rolled soft resin beneath the gates of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The pliant material cured into long rods imprinted by the pavement and the gates. To make Displaced Holes (2012), the artist dug large holes in the earth at LLNL and similar locations and cast them in foam and plaster. This process allowed her to map largely cordoned-off places through their physical impressions, an investigation that led the artist to elaborate other means of accessing the sites and the surveillance tools of the military-industrial complex.

— “First Look: Rhonda Holberton” in Art in America April 2015