Miky Fábrega

In The Banana Problem, Panamanian artist Miky Fábrega presents a composition with a bright yellow background completely covered by a pattern of bananas. In the lower right corner is Mafalda, gazing intently at the chaos of bananas surrounding her, while holding her right hand to her chin in a thoughtful gesture. The work reflects on the problem of massive banana monoculture in Latin America through the appropriation of two American cultural icons: Andy Warhol’s famous banana, made for the album cover of The Velvet Underground, and Mafalda, the iconic character from Quino’s cartoon that had an enormous impact on Latin American visual culture. By bringing together two distant symbols, Fábrega invites us to reflect on an environmental, social, and economic issue involving agents from all over the continent. This piece is accompanied by another entitled The Banana Solution, in which Mafalda appears in the same context, but now smiling and wearing a dress of black polka dots that evoke the pattern of ripe bananas. This second painting seems to show the understanding of the problem through a character known precisely for questioning and denouncing humanity’s problems.