no hay pan (there’s no bread) is a sculpture composed of a bread loaf, filled with sand. It is produced as an open multiple edition. In order to be fully realized, the sculpture must be broken and ‘shared’, revealing its sand content. Thus viewers become necessarily performers.The work was first made in a residency in Matadero, Madrid, in 2014. If its title comes from a slogan from spanish protests demanding equality and transparency, a historical fact, its materiality, in its turn, derives from the myth of the manna, the sacred bread god sent to the jewish people during its 40 years crossing of the desert. ‘No Hay Pan’ inverts the manna topology by placing the desert inside the bread, moreover, the sharing of the bread as opening into another world.
In its first inception, in Madrid, the piece was produced daily and given to friends or acquainted. The artwork was produced, consumed and registered on a daily basis.
The instantaneous photographic film was chosen to keep the production\consumption loop in a daily basis. It also contrasted the chemical spontaneity with the very organised sequence of gestures, in other words a rite.
In 2015 ‘No Hay Pan’ was exhibited at Gluck50, in Milan. The gallery was converted into a “bakery”, a production site, where the sculpture was made in a more industrial scale. ‘No hay pan’ was sold for 10 euro and all the existing polaroids sequences were shown, as if they were instructions for the use of the work.
A catalog was published, it can be downloaded here.
matheus rocha pitta 