Maíra das Neve

Going Bananas (2010) (2024–2025) is a video work by Maíra das Neves that reactivates the modernist concept of anthropophagy—cultural cannibalism—as a framework to think about Brazilian identity. By “devouring” both literal and symbolic references, the artist enacts a performative digestion of figures ranging from Carmen Miranda to Andy Warhol, from Debret to Eckhout. Bananas become the conduit through which questions of gender, commodity culture, and tropical exoticism are staged. The work situates the act of eating as both material and metaphorical: a visceral gesture of consumption and an intellectual strategy of absorbing, transforming, and subverting foreign influences to assert cultural autonomy.

The video’s accelerated rhythm heightens its sense of urgency, echoing the pace of modern life and amplifying the tensions between desire and revulsion, consumption and identity. Das Neves performs in a precarious setting that underscores the ambivalence of the tropics as both lush and fraught, moving between parody and critique. Without spoken words, the work communicates instead through gagging, swallowing, and pauses of resistance, turning the body into a site of contested meaning. Going Bananas thus stages anthropophagy as both a strategy of resistance and a meditation on the unstable boundaries between pleasure, power, and cultural belonging.

Link to the videowork: https://vimeo.com/29929244?fl=pl&fe=vl