Anita Becerra

Deceptively simple, Anita Becerra’s Envy (2020) presents a single green ceramic banana resting against a white background. Its minimalism belies a dense web of associations: desire, greed, exploitation, and the violent histories embedded in the fruit.

For Becerra, envy is the seed of greed—an appetite that grows unchecked, never satisfied. The banana, once exoticized and consumed as a symbol of modern abundance, also became a commodity around which entire nations were reshaped through colonialism, corporate exploitation, and bloodshed. This small sculpture condenses those vast histories into a fragile yet solid object.

The ceramic banana cannot be eaten. Its surface, polished and alluring, conceals its true nature: bite down and your teeth would shatter. In this way, Envy plays with deception. Desire promises satisfaction, but what it delivers may be ruinous. The work also reverses the terms of exoticism: while the banana is now a common household staple, a handmade ceramic version appears strange, unfamiliar, even rare.

By embodying envy in this form, Becerra materializes an intangible feeling and ties it to the long trajectory of greed and exploitation that the banana represents. The work asks us to consider how individual desires connect to collective histories—how something as small as envy can fuel cycles of harm that extend far beyond the self.