Adál Maldonado

The photographer Adál Maldonado (better known as ADÁL) is a Nuyorican (Puerto Rican in New York) who explores the relationship between conceptual art and migrant identity in humorous images where the real and the surreal go hand in hand. A member of the Nuyorican poetry movement, ADÁL explores the relationship between language and image, often creating plays on words in English, Spanish and Spanglish. In Breathing the last plátano on Earth, the artist portrays himself wearing a dinner jacket with a gas mask and a straw hat, the latter identifying him as someone from the Caribbean. The gas mask is connected to a capsule with a banana inside, which ADÁL is holding in his hand. The title of the work is a play on words: Breathing the Last Plátano on Earth (Breathing the Last Banana on Earth) suggests “breathing” and “breeding”, so that the viewer is left wondering who breeds whom and who needs whom to breathe, whether it is the banana needing the artist or the artist the banana, emphasising the symbiotic relationship between the two.