Paulo Nazareth

In Petróleo y banana (2020), Paulo Nazareth condenses two of Latin America’s most historically exploited resources into a stark and deceptively simple drawing. Rendered in charcoal on paper, the work depicts two palm-like forms: one emerging organically from the ground, the other transformed into an oil derrick whose metallic structure mimics the silhouette of a banana tree. Through this visual substitution, Nazareth collapses distinctions between nature and extraction, suggesting how monoculture and fossil fuel economies operate through parallel logics of appropriation, dependency, and environmental violence. The rough, almost childlike quality of the drawing reinforces its directness, evoking protest graffiti, popular signage, or improvised political imagery rather than polished institutional representation.

By pairing “oil” and “banana” within the same symbolic field, Nazareth situates the banana economy within a broader history of extractivism in the Global South. The work recalls how multinational corporations and foreign interventions have shaped territories across Latin America through the exploitation of natural resources, agricultural labor, and infrastructure. At the same time, the image’s humor and apparent simplicity mask a deeper critique: the banana tree becomes indistinguishable from an industrial drilling tower, implying that the promise of economic development often reproduces the same systems of dispossession under different guises. In Nazareth’s hands, the banana emerges not merely as an agricultural product, but as an enduring emblem of colonial continuity and geopolitical power.