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About The Great Leap

The gathered works in this exhibition project connect Nelson life experience into two meaningful  contexts for Cuban culture: Havana and Miami. These works manifest his transition from one city to  another and his relationship with both places. The selection of works indiscriminately encompasses  notions of censorship, memory, and freedom. 

One of the main pillars of this project is the series Amnesia, in which Jalil unveils a world where libraries  and archives face the raw power of nature engulfed by fire, wind, water, and lush vegetation. This  series was born while he lived in Cuba, with the first burning libraries. The image of the bonfire of books has re-occurred at multiple instances in Human History. These are all moments when a group  in power denies others of the knowledge contained in the volumes condemned to fire. The act of burning a book is one of the most conspicuous forms of censorship. Nelson has often described the work  as inspired by “The Torquemada effect” in Cuban culture, a term he created. 

Organically, he found himself exposing libraries, bookcases, and file rooms to the other classical  elements of water, wind, and earth. At this point, the series introduces new themes such as memory,  loss or impermanence, and how History as we know it is only individuals’ perspective of world events with major omissions/additions. 

Simultaneously, he started working on the series The country of empty pools. One day, he realized  all public swimming pools in Cuba were disabled or wholly destroyed. He visited several of these  abandoned places and decided to paint fragments such as old drains with rust or missing tiles. His  interest in these kinds of places is directly connected with the idea of empty swimming pools as a metaphor for the country’s current situation. 

After arriving in the United States and contemplating these abandoned swimming pools, Nelson frequently attended Miami’s fancy local swimming pools. He decided to use these new scenarios for a series of narrative paintings where, in every case, something is happening, something has happened, or something is about to happen. If he were to succinctly describe this series, Bad Day for a Poet in  Miami, Nelson would say it is a collection of paintings where he explores the fragile relationship between the creative process and comfort. 

Parallel to this series of works, he has also produced related works such as The Big Jump (from which  the project title is inspired), where he represents a bird’s eye view of a swimming pool with no bottom and a trampoline. This painting is a metaphor for any situation in which we face the unknown, and in his case, in particular, is very connected with the process of emigrating.