Nash Caldera

In Untitled (Plantain Clog) (2021), Nash Caldera imagines banana slippers as improbable vehicles for movement and survival. Part shoe, part plantain, the hybrid object evokes the intimate relationship between travel and the body, proposing footwear not simply as protection but as a device that enables migration, endurance, and transformation. The absurdity of the image—banana-shaped clogs encased within a vacuum travel bag—creates a surreal visual language through which everyday objects become charged with histories of circulation and displacement.

The work also reflects the artist’s experience during a residency in Leeuwarden, where encounters with Dutch clog culture subtly informed the imagery. By connecting the iconic wooden clog with the tropical plantain, Caldera stages an unexpected dialogue between Caribbean histories and Northern European visual culture. The vacuum bag reinforces the idea of portability and compressed movement, suggesting how identities and belongings are continually reorganized through travel. Humor becomes central to the work’s critical force: beneath its playful surface lies a meditation on how bodies, objects, and crops alike move through global systems of exchange.