Nancy Baker Cahill (born 1970) is an American new media artist based in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

.Selvin, Claire
"Who Will Shape the Art World in 2021?: ARTnews Presents 'The Deciders', Nancy Davis Cahill,"
''ARTnews'', December 1, 2020. Retrieved 2022-11-28.Kirsch, Corinna
"Artist Nancy Baker Cahill Uses Augmented Reality to Advocate for New Methods of Kinship in a Changing Climate,"
''Cultured'', December 4, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022. She has created immersive

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR), also known as mixed reality (MR), is a technology that overlays real-time 3D computer graphics, 3D-rendered computer graphics onto a portion of the real world through a display, such as a handheld device or head-mounted ...

(AR) and

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...

(VR) experiences, video installations and blockchain projects, oftentimes rooted in drawing.Neel, Tucker
"Nancy Baker Cahill Challenges the Limits of Perception Seeing the World Anew,"
''Artillery'', March 8, 2022. Retrieved 2022-11-28. Her work frequently merges technology and public art, drawing upon both feminist

land art Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & mo ...

and the history of political interventions to examine systemic power, body autonomy, civics and climate crisis, among other issues.Finkel, Jori
"Artist Nancy Baker Cahill projects exploding uterus atop the US Supreme Court,"
''The Art Newspaper'', April 14, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022.Whitney Museum
Walter Annenberg Lecture: Nancy Baker Cahill
Events, 2024. Retrieved January 19, 2022. She is the founder and director of 4th Wall, a free AR public art platform focused on public engagement, critical social practice and site interventions.

Education and career

Baker Cahill was born in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

and grew up in Boston.Kent, Charlotte
"How Artists Are Seizing the NFT Moment to Transform the Debate About Tech and the Environment,"
''Artnet'', August 12, 2021. Retrieved 2022-11-28. She received a BA in art from

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim ...

in 1992. After working at a Boston television station, she began her art career in Los Angeles in 2007. Baker Cahill has exhibited extended reality works at the 2019

Desert X Desert X is a site-specific, contemporary art exhibition that is held in the Coachella Valley in Southern California. The inaugural Desert X was held from February 25 to April 30, 2017, and has held subsequent exhibitions every two years. The nex ...

Biennial,Knight, Christopher
"For Desert X 2019, I drove 198 miles to see 19 artists’ work. Here’s the best,"
''Los Angeles Times'', February 23, 2019. Retrieved 2022-11-28.

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

,Whitney Museum
"Nancy Baker Cahill: Cento,"
Exhibitions, 2023. Retrieved January 19, 2022.

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

, Francisco Carolinum (Linz)Ars Electronica
"Proof of Art – A brief history of NFTs."
Retrieved 2022-12-02. and

Kunsthalle Zürich The Kunsthalle Zürich is a kunsthalle (a contemporary art exhibition centre) in Zürich, Switzerland. Founded in 1985, it is located on Limmatstrasse, near the city centre. A number of temporary exhibitions are organized each year. Directors * ...

.Kunsthalle Zurich
DYOR 08.10.2022–15.01.2023
Exhibitions. Retrieved 2022-12-02. She was included in the public projects Sunset Digital Billboards (2018) and "Luminex: Dialogues of Light" (2021), an exhibition of digital projections mapped onto Los Angeles buildings. She has had featured exhibitions at the

Pasadena Museum of California Art The Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) was an art museum located in Pasadena, California, United States, showcasing art and design originating from California. The museum was founded by long-time Pasadena residents and art collectors Robert ...

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Located in Hollywood, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) is a nonprofit exhibition space and archive of the visual arts for the city of Los Angeles, California, United States, currently under the leadership of Sarah Russin. History In ...

(LACE), Boston Cyberarts, the LUMA Foundation Elevation 1049 Biennial, and the

Georgia Museum of Art Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

(her first retrospective, "Through Lines," 2023).Smith, Jessica
"Nancy Baker Cahill Bridges Physical and Virtual Worlds Through Augmented Reality Artwork,"
''Flagpole'', December 20, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022. In 2018, Baker Cahill founded 4th Wall, a free AR applicationCulp, Samantha
"Augmented Dreams,"
''Art in America'', January 11, 2021. Retrieved 2022-11-28. 4th Wall provides a platform through which artists can exhibit virtual works to a wider audience and intervene in specific, outdoor public spaces through a geo-location feature. She and other artists have used it as a tool to mount public art exhibitions in AR at sites of cultural, historical and political significance.Etienne, Alexandra
"Art & Activism: Nancy Baker Cahill + Coordinates project,"
''Coeur & Art'', 2018. Retrieved 2022-11-28.

Work

Baker Cahill's early work centered on works on paper and videos that explored physical embodiment in an increasingly immersive manner. In the latter 2010s, she began creating 3D digital iterations of abstract drawings that suggested organic forms or forces in motion. In her later extended reality works, she often digitally transforms hand-drawn works on paper into sculptural, hybrid objects and moving animations that can be reinserted into the world as videos, prints, or illuminated projections.

Traditional work

Throughout Baker Cahill's career, drawing has been a foundational practice, extending across two- and three-dimensional, as well as VR and AR mediums. She initially worked semi-representationally, but turned to abstraction in 2010 with graphite, gouache and video depictions of undulating, biomorphic forms set against velvety expanses.Neel, Tucker. ''Nancy Baker Cahill: Fascinomas'' Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Museum of California Art, 2012. Critics described these works as visceral, sometimes unsettling, Rorschach-like viewing experiences that suggested technology-aided explorations into the unseen depths of the body. In various series, she experimented with drawings that transitioned into three-dimensional space, by shooting them with bullets, puncturing them with a leather puncher or collaging shrapnel-like slivers onto them. In the latter 2010s, she sought to create more immersive experiences in her "Surds," "Manifestos" and "Hollowpoint" series, which resembled twisting bodily forms or swirling storms, falling comets and teeming undergrowth. She turned to virtual reality (and later, augmented reality) in 2017, mark-making in the air with a handheld controller to create 3D digital iterations captured by laser of her "Hollowpoint" graphite drawings.

Extended reality (XR) projects

Baker Cahill's initial extended reality projects were created in virtual reality. These included her VR "Hollowpoint" drawings (LACE, 2018) and her Sunset Digital Billboards project (2018), which depicted abstract towers of translucent color and jagged edges of metallic shards floating through space. Seeking wider access to her work than VR could offer, she shifted to augmented reality after creating the free 4th Wall application. In several large-scale, site-responsive AR projects, Baker Cahill addressed environmental devastation and accountability. Elvira Wilk of ''Frieze'' described these mutable and relocatable works as "a distinct counterpoint to (masculinist)

traditions that exalt human intervention into the natural landscape." Her Desert X works, ''Revolutions'' and ''Margin of Error'' (2019), placed bursting, animated drawings—of fuchsia, gold and orange desert blooms and abstract, organic forms—above a Palm Springs wind farm and the Salton Sea, spatially and conceptually tying sites of renewable energy with the casualties of environmental disruption and degradation. ''Los Angeles Times'' critic Christopher Knight described the latter work as a haunting, "twirling, swirling fog of phantasmagorical shards of light and shadow hovering in the sky" that evoked a star being born from a cloud of dust, a plague of locusts, or a thought forming.

Mushroom Cloud

Baker Cahill exhibited ''Mushroom Cloud'' in site-responsive AR iterations at Art Basel Miami (2021), the

Santa Monica Pier The Santa Monica Pier is a large pier at the foot of Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, California, United States. It contains a small amusement park, concession stands, and areas for views and fishing. The pier is part of the greater Santa Monic ...

and the

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Enterprises. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. The festival ...

(both 2022). In its first two versions, a fiery, cataclysmic mushroom cloud swells and explodes over the ocean before transforming into a crackling web of lacy, lilac arterial threads—more hopeful, interconnected forms that suggested digital webs and

mycelia Mycelium (: mycelia) is a root-like structure of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. Its normal form is that of branched, slender, entangled, anastomosing, hyaline threads. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are fo ...

l (fungal) networks. ''Stone Speaks'' (2022–23) similarly evoked both ecological disaster and its healing, depicting a kind of

Big Bang The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models based on the Big Bang concept explain a broad range of phenomena, including th ...

in reverse forming into a sphere and then a verdant Earth-like planet which undergoes deterioration and then regeneration.Hicks, Cinqué
"'Stone Speaks' brings augmented reality to Piedmont Park with a bang,"
''ArtsATL'', December 7, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022.

Liberty Bell

On July 4, 2020, Baker Cahill presented ''

Liberty Bell The Liberty Bell, previously called the State House Bell or Old State House Bell, is an iconic symbol of American Revolution, American independence located in Philadelphia. Originally placed in the steeple of Pennsylvania State House, now know ...

'', six public site-specific animated artworks commissioned by

Art Production Fund Art Production Fund (APF) is a non-profit organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, U.S. tax code that presents public art throughout the United States. It was founded in 2000 by Yvonne Force Villareal and Doreen Remen. ...

that appeared in culturally significant sites across the Eastern United States: the

Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party was a seminal American protest, political and Mercantilism, mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, during the American Revolution. Initiated by Sons of Liberty activists in Boston in Province of Massachusetts Bay, colo ...

harbor; the

Washington Monument The Washington Monument is an obelisk on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate George Washington, a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father of the United States, victorious commander-in-chief of the Continen ...

; the "

Rocky Steps The Rocky Steps are 72 stone steps leading up to the East entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia that gained global fame after being featured in a notable scene from the 1976 film ''Rocky''. In the scene, Rocky Balboa, an u ...

" in Philadelphia; the Fort Tilden Army installation;

Fort Sumter Fort Sumter is a historical Coastal defense and fortification#Sea forts, sea fort located near Charleston, South Carolina. Constructed on an artificial island at the entrance of Charleston Harbor in 1829, the fort was built in response to the W ...

; and the

Edmund Pettus Bridge The Edmund Pettus Bridge carries U.S. Route 80 Business (Selma, Alabama), U.S. Route 80 Business (US 80 Bus.) across the Alabama River in Selma, Alabama, United States. Built in 1940, it is named after Edmund Pettus, a former Confeder ...

in Selma, Alabama. The animation depicted a floating, shape-shifting coil of red, white and blue brushstrokes roughly approximating a swaying, abstracted Liberty Bell—accompanied by a raucous soundtrack—which built toward arrhythmic dissolution but retained cohesion. ''Artillery'' wrote that the "writhing, seething mess of threads" and tolling bell "embodies the turbulent political discourse of an election year and the fraying state of American democracy." ''

Smithsonian Magazine ''Smithsonian'' is a magazine covering science, history, art, popular culture and innovation. The first issue was published in 1970. History The history of ''Smithsonian'' began when Edward K. Thompson, the retired editor of ''Life'' magazine ...

'' described the work as a timely reflection on liberty, freedom and injustice, "when communities are reckoning with the racist legacies of historical monuments across the country and, in many cases, taking them down."

State Property and Cento

In 2023, Baker Cahill projected ''State Property'' above the U.S. Supreme Court and selected statehouses, a visceral image of a neon-red, fracturing uterus designed to address and map out the sites of the most extreme legislation restricting abortion and reproductive rights throughout the nation.Finkel, Jori
"Artist Nancy Baker Cahill projects exploding uterus atop the US Supreme Court,"
''The Art Newspaper'', April 14, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022.Takac, Balasz
"Artist Nancy Baker Cahill Projects Exploding Uterus Artwork above the US Supreme Court,"
''Widewalls'', April 21, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022.Sager, Rebekah
"Artist Nancy Baker Cahill installs image of exploding uterus over Supreme Court building,"
''American Journal News'', May 1, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022. Later in the year, she presented the AR work ''Cento'' at the Whitney Museum, a fictitious hybrid creature. Participants could use an app to collectively transform it by adding feathers that enabled new adaptive skills.Cascone, Sarah
"Artist Nancy Baker Cahill’s New A.R. Work Unleashes a Surreal Interspecies Creature on the Terrace of the Whitney Museum,"
''Artnet'', October 4, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022. The work positioned different species—human, cephalopod, microbiome, avian, mycelial, marine and machine—as one interconnected body, pointing to the necessity of collaboration and interdependence in the face of climate crisis. ''Surface'' magazine described it as seeming "to spring from the intersection of steampunk and ancient mythology."Adrian-Diaz, Jenna
"Nancy Baker Cahill Bursts Through the Fourth Wall, and Other News,"
''Surface'', October 3, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022.

NFT and blockchain projects

In 2021, Baker Cahill began working with

non-fungible token A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that is recorded on a blockchain and is used to certify ownership and authenticity. It cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchai ...

s (NFTs) and

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

technology, as in the work ''Slipstream 001'' (2021), for which she used torn graphite paper to create a sculpture that was transmuted into a 3D object and filmed so that it moved in a slow semi-circle before viewers. Charlotte Kent of ''

The Brooklyn Rail ''The Brooklyn Rail'' is an American publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics, based in Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and ...

'' described the multi-layered piece as a "simple yet disconcerting breakdown and reconfiguration of a 'real' sculpture." Baker Cahill collaboratively developed ''Contract Killers''—an NFT project critiquing smart contracts, accountability and the yet-unrealized promise of equity in the blockchain space—with art lawyer Sarah Conley Odenkirk, Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, and Snark.art. It consisted of four separate AR renderings of a handshake dissipating into a swirl of pixels in front of selected charged environments (e.g., Los Angeles City Hall, the Hall of Justice) in order to represent a state of failed social trust and obligation. New media art curator and historian

Christiane Paul Christiane Paul (; born 8 March 1974) is a German film, television and stage actress. Career Paul first worked as a model for magazines such as '' Bravo''. She was 17 when she obtained her first leading role in the film '. Prior to her acting c ...

wrote, "By minting them as NFTs, aker Cahillpositions the smart contract among other kinds of contracts—social, judicial, financial—and highlights the instability of all of them."

Curatorial and collaborative projects

Baker Cahill's collaborative projects have examined social issues, often using 4th Wall to virtually locate works at contested sites, enabling critical commentary while skirting issues of permission. In 2018, she initiated "Coordinates," a series of global AR public exhibitions strategically situated to address topical issues such as the

Breonna Taylor Breonna Taylor (June 5, 1993 – March 13, 2020) was an African-American woman who Killing of Breonna Taylor, was shot and killed while unarmed in her Louisville, Kentucky home by three police officers who entered under the auspices of a No-kn ...

tragedy. "Defining Line" was an extension of that project that activated untold sites of historical significance along the

Los Angeles River The Los Angeles River (), historically known as by the Tongva and the by the Spanish, is a major river in Los Angeles County, California. Its headwaters are in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains, and it flows nearly from Canoga Park ...

involving urban redevelopment, the environment, Native histories and patterns of gentrification. In 2019, Baker Cahill co-curated "Battlegrounds" with Jesse Damiani, an exhibition of 31 AR works that sought to reclaim various locations in and around

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

, including a sugarcane plantation, gentrified neighborhoods, prisons, polluted waterways and confederate statues.

Recognition

Baker Cahill's work belongs to the collections of the Whitney Museum,

Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...

(MOCA) and Lancaster Museum of Art and History, among others.''Art Papers''
Nancy Baker Cahill
Events, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022.Lancaster Museum of Art and History
"Nancy Baker Cahill's Lifelines,"
Public Art Projects, 2023. Retrieved January 25, 2022. In 2022, she received a LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant and a COLA (City of Los Angeles) Master Artist Fellowship. She was an artist fellow at the

Occidental College Occidental College (informally Oxy) is a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1887 as a coeducational college by clergy and members of the Presbyterian Church, it became non-sectarian in 1910. It is ...

Oxy Arts' Encoding Futures program (2021), a Williams College Bicentennial Medal of Honor recipient (2021), and one of ten

Berggruen Institute The Berggruen Institute is a Los Angeles-based think tank founded by Nicolas Berggruen. History Berggruen Institute was formed in 2010 by founder Nicolas Berggruen and co-founder Nathan Gardels as a global network of "thinkers" dedicated to ...

inaugural artist fellows in its Transformations of the Human program (2020).Dambrot, Shana Nys
"It's A Lot: Arts Calendar September 16-22,"
''LA Weekly'', September 15, 2021. Retrieved 2022-11-28.Williams College Society of Alumni
"Bicentennial Medalist in Conversation: Nancy Baker Cahill '92". Society of Alumni
Events. Retrieved 2022-11-28.Berggruen Institute
Nancy Baker Cahill
People. Retrieved 2022-11-29. In 2012, she received an ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation. She was a featured TEDx speaker in 2018 and a keynote speaker at Games for Change in New York City in 2019. In 2024, the Whitney Museum selected Baker Cahill to give its annual Walter Annenberg Lecture.

References

External links

Nancy Baker Cahill official websiteNancy Baker Cahill
''ARTLAWS'' podcast, March 2023
Nancy Baker Cahill, Nina Roehs Interview
''Right Click Save'', January 2023 {{DEFAULTSORT:Cahill, Nancy 1970 births 21st-century American artists 21st-century American women artists Artists from Cambridge, Massachusetts American social justice activists Artists from Los Angeles Augmented reality Living people American political artists Virtual reality Williams College alumni