Leandro Nerefu

Uma Breve Historia da Historia Banana na Arte da is a talk-performance by the Brazilian artist Leandro Nerefu. In this performance, the artist takes advantage of the techniques of academic lectures to present the history of the banana in Latin America through a vast compilation of images, films, videos, and even music. The performance occurs on a stage that includes a table, a green chalkboard, a projector, and a long series of elements that the artist brings up as his talk progresses. He begins by presenting the “theses” of his project to place the banana at a crossroads, right in between civilization and the primitive. Humor and the absurd are fundamental elements of his presentation. As in the artist’s book of the same title, Nerefu uses his “banana archive” to ultimately narrate a history of the absurd through this fruit.