Dodi Espinosa

This hanging sculpture by Dodi Espinosa takes its name from the Gros Michel (2020), the first banana variety traded on a global scale. Once the cornerstone of Central America’s export economy, the cultivar was virtually eradicated in the 1950s by Panama disease, forcing its replacement by the Cavendish banana that dominates the world market today. By invoking the memory of the Gros Michel, the work recalls both the fragility of monoculture and the deep economic dependencies created by the global fruit trade.

Shaped like an oversized head, the sculpture becomes a surrogate for the laborers whose bodies sustained the plantation system. The yellow surface, scarred with black marks, evokes sunburns and pesticide poisoning, pointing to the physical toll of agricultural work under exploitative conditions. In magnifying these marks on a monumental form, the piece transforms the banana into a site of testimony, where the pursuit of “perfect” fruit is revealed as inseparable from histories of exhaustion, illness, and systemic violence.