Yaron Michael Hakim

Based on interviews with Colombian adoptees, Plátano (María) translates a personal testimony into a landscape shaped by memory and violence. The painting draws on the story of a woman whose father was killed on the day she was born. Rather than illustrating the event directly, Hakim disperses it across the composition: a body lies in the background while, in the foreground, a seated woman occupies the center of the scene with her face replaced by a banana blossom. Painted on repurposed Dacron sailcloth, whose seams, stains, and traces of previous use remain visible, the work turns its support into a material record of movement, displacement, and lived histories.

The banana blossom introduces a tension between seduction and concealment. Historically associated with fertility, desire, and tropical exoticism, it simultaneously obscures the sitter's identity, transforming María into an allegorical figure marked by inherited trauma. The hanging cluster of bananas links motherhood, reproduction, and plantation economies, while the lush landscape coexists with the violence that structures the scene. Rather than signifying abundance, the banana becomes a visual device through which Hakim brings together the contradictions of Colombia: beauty and mourning, fertility and loss, colonial desire and fractured memory.