Anita Becerra

In Connected (2020), Anita Becerra transforms the banana into a chain, each ceramic link modeled after the fruit that reshaped entire nations. Draped over a pedestal, the heavy white forms are at once fragile and monumental, embodying the weight of history and the delicate act of remembering.

The chain speaks to the entanglements between the United States and Central America, particularly Honduras, where Becerra’s father is from. U.S. corporations like the United Fruit Company seized land, exploited labor, and controlled governments, leaving deep legacies of inequality, corruption, and violence. These “banana republics” were not merely historical moments; their consequences reverberate today in cycles of poverty, instability, and migration.

The sculpture stages this history through form: the banana becomes not a symbol of nourishment but of entrapment. At the same time, the chain resists a single reading. For Becerra, the links also recall DNA, lineage, and the ties that bind families and communities. Exploitation ripples outward, but so does resilience. The work thus asks whether our shared histories keep us bound to injustice or can be reimagined as connections that support and sustain.
In its looping ceramic links, Connected renders visible the dual nature of connection: at once oppressive and sustaining, destructive and potentially generative.