The Plush Feathered Banana - Must See Exhibition at Americas Society
The Americas Society’s latest exhibition curated by Miguel A. López, codirector and curator of TEOR/éTica (San José, Costa Rica) features the intertwining works of artists, Victoria Cabezas and Priscilla Monge. It is on view Feb. 3 - May 4, 2019, but I wouldn’t wait to see it. Both artists, distinct in their approach to photography, soft sculpture, sound art, and other mixed media tackle issues of self-exoticization, tropical paradise, foreign interests in “banana republics,” hypersexualized masculinity, public performance around gender norms, sexual violence, and other social-political economies. One of the parting joys of the exhibition is the new mini-book series that Americas Society has created to accompany their shows. For the low, low price of $5 - you can purchase the book for the show. So far, they have created (2) in the series: Lydia Cabrera and Édouard Glissant: Trembling Thinking and Victoria Cabezas and Priscilla Monge: Give Me What You Ask For. See pictures below.
Of course, what first captured my attention were the banana works of Victoria Cabezas, however, I was excited to witness the overlap and sophisticated nuances of both artists’ works. Many of Cabezas’s themes I will be addressing in an upcoming article published by Zapruder world: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict; an open-access, online publication. My upcoming co-authored article with literary scholar, Annie Mendoza considers the 90th anniversary of the Banana Massacre in Colombia as seen through the lens of the literary and visual arts. We address many of the same themes of self-exoticization, hypersexual masculinity, the edible body of the “Latin Lover,” and the role of memory and forgetfulness.
Nevertheless, I believe one of the wall text descriptions captures Cabeza’s work best, taken from her Sin titulo (Untitled), 1973, Chromogenic print:
“In 1972-73, Cabezas began exploring the iconography of bananas through photography, photoengraving, and, to lesser extent, sculpture, to critique the exoticization of Latin American culture, the visual economy of masculinity, the stereotypes of tropical paradise, and the foreign interests and US military intervention in Central America and the Caribbean. For these photographs, Cabezas directed a male model dressed in formal attire to tenderly hug a large inflatable banana – later transformed into the sculpture El banano emplumado (the feathered banana) – or to carry a small banana made from black fabric – later the mechanical sculpture, Banana Cabaret. In this early work, situated between conceptual art and photo-performance, Cabezas produces fictions by having her characters play with the banana’s sexual connotations, teasing macho stereotypes and confronting self-exoticization.”
https://www.as-coa.org/visual-arts#exhibitions
