Conceptual artist Anna Banana died on November 29 within the city of Roberts Creek in British Columbia, Canada, on the age of 84. A pioneer in mail artwork, efficiency, and various publishing, Banana left an indelible mark on experimental observe and the worldwide community of artist collaboration.
The artist was born Anne Lee Lengthy on February 24, 1940, in Victoria, British Columbia. It was at Vancouver’s experimental New College, the place she taught elementary-age college students, that she acquired the nickname “Anna Banana” in 1968. She went on to spend two years at Esalen Institute, and after falling right into a field of bananas at a celebration in Massive Sur in 1970, she embraced the moniker, legally altering her identify in 1985.
“People aren’t comfortable with my name,” the artist instructed journalist Portia Priegert in 2015. “And, often, it goes to sexual things. Or it’s goofy and childlike.”
Anna Banana, “Mail Art” (1976), photocopies with stamps
In 1984, Banana printed her essay “Women in Mail Art” in Correspondence Artwork: Supply Guide for the Community of Worldwide Postal Artwork Exercise, highlighting the customarily missed contributions of ladies within the discipline and tailored from her 1978 introduction to a VILE situation subtitled “Fe-Mail Art.”
Anna Banana, “Mail Art to Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt” (1983), photocopy with handwriting and stamps
In 2015, the Artwork Gallery of Better Victoria offered the retrospective Anna Banana: 45 Years of Fooling Round with A. Banana, throughout which the artist gave away round 1,200 objects from her private correspondence archive to exhibition guests, a mission referred to as “Regifting the Bananas.” Final 12 months, Banana was included in Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines on the Brooklyn Museum.
Banana’s work didn’t explicitly deal with the politics of agriculture or the business’s abuses, however her use of the fruit as a logo connects to broader conversations about international commerce and cultural iconography. Her performances had been extremely interactive, exemplified by her 1993 mission “Proof Positive Germany is Going Bananas.” The parodic analysis tour of German cities explored what the artist termed the “new German banana consciousness” following reunification, when West Germans greeted residents of the East with once-scarce bananas.
Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian” (2019), an paintings consisting of a banana duct-taped to the wall, has not too long ago captured public and market consideration after it bought for $6.2 million at Sotheby’s. However Banana’s decades-long engagement with the fruit as an inventive image provides a extra nuanced remedy. Her playful adoption of the motif will be seen as an early instance of how on a regular basis objects can turn into highly effective autos for social interplay and anti-market trade.
Anna Banana and Vincent Trasov on the Victoria Day Parade, nonetheless from a 16 mm movie, 1972. (picture courtesy Morris and Helen Belkin Artwork Gallery, College of British Columbia, Morris/Trasov Archive)
In January 2025, ChertLüdde in Berlin will exhibit a number of “Banana Greetings” and different mailings from the Mail Artwork Archive of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Robert Rehfeldt, which is housed on the gallery, alongside works by Wolf-Rehfeldt and Trasov. “Anna’s language is distinguished by intensity, humor, sharp criticism, and directness as few others,” ChertLüdde proprietor Jennifer Chert instructed Hyperallergic. “Her presence in the archive enriches us immensely.”
Banana’s legacy lies in her capacity to construct each persona and group, bodily and conceptually. Her archive is housed on the Morris and Helen Belkin Artwork Gallery on the College of British Columbia.
She is survived by her daughter, Dana Lengthy.
Anna Banana, “Mail Art” (undated), print
Anna Banana, “Mail Art” (1978), newspaper article
