Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

a white sand beach with a pile of sea shells arranged into a round shape. blue sky and ocean in the background

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

a white sand beach with a pile of sea shells arranged into a long round oval shape.

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

a white sand beach with blue sky and ocean in the background

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

a white sand beach with a pile of sea shells arranged into a long round oval shape.

Robert Smithson, Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969)

Sanibel Island, Florida

Four 126 format chromogenic slides

Photograph: Robert Smithson

Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Photo and Slideworks

Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria

Robert Smithson
1969
Sanibel Island, Florida
Four 126 format chromogenic slides
Collection: Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro
© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Situated along the coast of Sanibel Island in Florida, Smithson’s Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria is sculpted from a pile of shells, its tenuous form vulnerable to the impacts of nature and time. The hypothetical continent in question is similarly fragile; theories surrounding Lemuria were disproved soon after their original conception. Smithson believed that the presence of any given object hinges on its absence; with this work, a concept’s non-existence is represented by material reality. While the sculptural element of this work inevitably unraveled with time with the shells dispersing into the sand—illustrating Smithson's fascination with entropy—the four 126 format chromogenic slides comprising this slidework remain as the manifestation of Smithson's ideas on Lemuria. 

In the Nonsites, the prehistoric reference comes through, but the sites are all here today, within the maps of materials (stone, mud, grass and shells). All of these things point to continents and land masses that don't exist today. That establishes a context.

Robert Smithson

“Interview with Robert Smithson (1970),” eds. Paul Toner and Robert Smithson in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), p236.

Related Info

Works on Paper
collage and drawing on graph paper depicting a theoretical continent of Lemuria, a map, and many handwritten notes
The Hypothetical Continent of Lemuria
Robert Smithson
1969
Works on Paper

Closely related to Smithson’s slidework Hypothetical Continent in Shells: Lemuria (1969), this two-dimensional work provides conceptual details around the object of representation. Lemuria, a theoretical continent whose existence was quickly disproved by the scientific community, comes to life through the artist’s attention. “You don’t have to have existence to exist,” Smithson asserted in Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan (1969).

See Also