Remembrance of Things Once Held is a photo-sculptural installation by Caroline Allison installed at the historic Neuhoff meatpacking plant in Nashville Tennessee from 2025-2026. Created with support from the Current Art Fund/Warhol Foundation and Neuhoff District, the work is inspired by historic, contemplative spaces and considers our dependence on the natural world and its increasing invisibility in our lives. Statement continues below.

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Presented in the Killing Room of the Neuhoff Meatpacking Plant, Remembrance of Things Once Held is about memory and our human intersections with the natural world. Our reliance on the rhythms of nature and the sustenance it provides is invisible to our digitally smoothed and aided existences.

Centered in the room is a cycloramic photograph of a cloud-filled sky taken from historic Fort Negley, once known as St. Cloud Hill. Its circular form references domed spaces of contemplation, which are found in religious architecture worldwide. In Western Baroque traditions, these frescoed domes often featured an intercessor dramatically pulling back a trompe-l’oeil curtain to reveal Mount Olympus or God or some other divine being in control of the world below.

Pushing out from the clouds is a dark blue cyanotype, referencing the celestial firmament and space beyond our atmosphere. Prussian Blue, the distillate color from the cyanotype process, was initially created using animal parts.

Fabric forms fixed in cement are placed on the floor and interact with the architecture, their movement held solidly in space. In their mud-colored shapes, some feel as if they have been pulled along by the Cumberland River, which runs below the building. Like the passing clouds in the panoramic photograph, they too have been stilled in their motion.

Our complex relationship with nature vacillates between reverence and consumption, and this installation invites viewers to consider what we hold sacred.