Sofía Salazar Rosales

In They Ask to Stay, Sofía Salazar Rosales transforms bananas into vulnerable bodies suspended between movement and permanence. Constructed from cement, charcoal, bitumen, paraffin, and other heavy materials, the fruits appear exhausted, fossilized, and unable to continue their journey. Wrapped in black beaded nets resembling fruit packaging, they evoke bananas that cannot withstand the voyage demanded by global trade. Rather than symbols of abundance or consumption, these bodies seem to plead for stillness—to remain where they are, held together in a fragile state of waiting. Their clustered forms recall the preserved victims of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, suggesting a moment in which catastrophe freezes both time and movement.

Throughout the installation, brightly colored bead strands reference the protective necklaces of Santería, introducing a spiritual dimension that contrasts with the violence of extraction and displacement. The surrounding scaffold points to the urban infrastructures built through agricultural export economies: the modern architectures made possible by plantation wealth and industrial expansion, yet themselves standardized and inherently fragile. By turning the banana into a vulnerable, almost human body caught between protection and precarity, Salazar Rosales shifts attention away from the commodity itself and toward the physical, emotional, and historical weight carried by systems of cultivation, migration, and global circulation.