Héctor Zamora

Héctor Zamora created this piece in two buildings with large glass frontages: the Plaza Comercial San Victorino and the Monserrate Building, which are both located on Jímenez Avenue in downtown Bogotá. Although the distance between the buildings is only a few hundred metres, each faces dramatically different socioeconomic realities. The project aimed to interrupt the urban landscape with unexpected interventions by cramming an entire storey of each building with bananas, from floor to ceiling. This gave the impression that Colombia’s history as a banana-producing country was fighting against being forgotten and staging a protest in the very centre of the city, impossible for passers-by to ignore. Over 20 days, the fruit ripened and its colour changed from green to yellow to brown to black, until decomposing entirely. The video documenting the project shows how workers unloaded the bunches of bananas from trucks and carried them up to the exhibition space in the windows of the buildings. The use of bananas, a staple food in the Colombian diet, in an intervention in the middle of the city resonated with local people along political, social and cultural lines.