By Danielle Fontaine ’14

Photo by Taryn Quaytman ’16/ The Lafayette

Miniature sailboats cover the floor of the gallery. Each one has a sail of homemade bread that rests atop a cement boat, which floats on a pile of salt. This is Assistant Professor of Art Nestor Armando Gil’s exhibit, “Pan (Myotopia).”

“It was [my daughter’s] suggestion,” said Gil of the bread sails. “Then the word ‘pan’ you know popped into my mind…I decided, yes, harvest is right, I should use bread for the sails and pan is bread and, wait a minute, pan is also a prefix in English.”

Gil, who is from Cuba, speaks English and Spanish and uses both languages in his works. The title of this exhibit stems from the Spanish word for bread, “pan,” and the combination of the words myopic and utopia—myopic referring to near-sighted, utopia to an unreal, idealistic world.

This unique way of combining words is not unusual for Gil, as Gil believes that language as a whole has a variety of meanings. “It was not simply translated from bread to pan, but then realizing that when translating back to English, you came up with another kind of word that was still relevant,” Gil said.

The bread sails are sustenance for the journey that the sailboats make, and also serve as a metaphor for hope. “It catches the air and propels the boat forward in the way that hope compels us forward in our journey to a new place,” Gil said.

The sailboats play on the aeration of both bread and sails, and the connection between the two for both being full of air. The bread is nourishment for people, the sails are nourishment for the movement of the ships. “And then beyond that,” said Gil, “just the notion that both bread and the sail being these elements of hope, of hopefulness, of promise to get to the new place.”

Another concept behind the exhibit is the duality behind a single image. “There are two projections in the exhibition,” said Gil, referring to the way the piles of salt create the appearance of a rushing river. “It’s site specific because there is a river that runs right under the gallery,” Gil continued. “It sort of echoes what’s happening down below.”

“There is this idea that we are in an eloquent vessel full of hope and trying to get to this other place. To this other place over this salty sea.”

Gil’s exhibit will be running until December 14 in the Grossman Gallery in the Williams Visual Arts building.