Biography
Allison Leigh Holt (b. Fairfax, VA, 1972) is a neurodivergent artist based in Upstate New York and Northern California. Their multidisciplinary work uses techniques of expanded cinema and the Light and Space Movement to model diverse manifestations of mind. A Fulbright Scholar (Indonesia) and current Lucas Arts Fellow (Montalvo Art Center), Holt’s work has been supported by The Ford Foundation Gallery, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Cemeti Institute for Art and Society (Indonesia), the Experimental Television Center, and the North Dakota Museum of Art. They have been a resident researcher at Sanggar Perbakayun, the Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science and Technology, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Holt has exhibited at The Ford Foundation Gallery, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, BAMPFA, Stanford University, SFMOMA, The Exploratorium, Cemeti Institute for Art and Society (solo, Indonesia), The North Dakota Museum of Art (solo), the Boston Cyberarts Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, Axiom Gallery for New and Experimental Media (solo, Boston), the Urban Screens Conference (Melbourne), and the Yogyakarta International New Media Festival. They have presented at cellsBUTTON and Video Vortex conferences (Indonesia); the Cultural Studies Association Conference; the 20th Annual Science of Consciousness Conference; Imagining the Universe: Cosmology in Art and Science at Stanford Arts Institute; RIXC Art-Science Festival (Riga, Latvia); After Agency (Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, Mickiewicz University, Poland); and the College Art Association Conference. At the University of North Dakota Writers Conference, Holt was in dialogue with science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and theoretical physicist Brian Greene; and they were plenary faculty in the 2022 Mind & Life Summer Research Institute: Othering, Becoming, and Belonging.
Commissions include The Ford Foundation Gallery, San Francisco Arts Commission, the David Bermant Foundation, the Zero1 Biennial, Pro Arts Gallery, and UC Santa Barbara’s Denise Montell Molecular Science Laboratory, where it is also included in the collection.
Holt has taught at San Francisco State University, Massachusetts College of Art, and developed Neurodivergent Media, an experimental media art pedagogy for autistics. Their writing features in Yale’s Theater Magazine, Panorama Journal, Public Journal, and Leonardo Journal. They studied at The Evergreen State College (BA), Massachusetts College of Art (MFA), and now pursue Ph.D. studies Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Artist Statement
My research–based work explores divergent ways of sensing, processing, and exchanging information. Combining moving image and sculpture, diagrams, performance, and sunlight, my projects illustrate frameworks embedded in consciousness.
While investigating different epistemologies in dialogue with experts—Javanese shamans, autistics, astrophysicists—I interpret the core structures I find within these worldviews into diagrams. These become prints and/or blueprints for works in glass, plexiglass, or resin. When activated by video or sunlight, the latter reveal delicate, powerful moving images, resulting in three-dimensional forms that convey, for example, higher-dimensional phenomena, or alternate concepts of time.
I am interested in the interrelatedness of human knowledge, natural systems, and spirituality that is endemic to resilient ways of life. My work describes perspectives that propose radical shifts in cultural, anthropocentric, and Earth-based biases, at a time when human behavior determines our planet’s survival.