Erika Nj Allen

In The Wall of Bananas, Guatemalan-born artist Erika NJ Allen reflects on the legacy of the banana industry in Latin America based on her experience as a consumer of bananas. On the one hand, the work alludes to the prominent place occupied by the fruit in the Latin American diet and culture. It also recalls the ambivalent role of bananas in the region: an important and affordable source of livelihood for the population, but also a symbol of the exploitation of this population by the mass export banana industry. The piece is a monument on flexible paste similar to pasticine in which several translucent porcelain bananas glossed with an organic varnish made by the artist are adhered to the surface and backlit by red LED lights. The work recalls the “whitening” of Latin America by the neo-colonial practices of the multinational banana companies and draws attention to the fact that the criminal record of these companies cannot be hidden—represented in the work by the red light that underlies the white porcelain.