The title of this work refers to the location coordinates of a site-specific intervention made by the artist in a banana plantation in Ecuador, her country of origin. Expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, they indicate the location of the facility with respect to the main parallel, the equator (latitude), and in of the Greenwich meridian (longitude). The documentation shows the tree coated with the gold leaf technique and an aerial view of the crop where it stands out, as an anomaly, due to the contrast in color.
Carried out in Machala, a city in the province of El Oro known as the banana capital of the world, the intervention refers to the processes of colonialism, slavery and exploitation that constitute a fundamental topic in the social and political history of the country, as well as, more broadly, of Latin America. As is well known, the pejorative expression "banana republics" has historically been used to refer not only to a common agricultural production in the region but also to a supposed condition of underdevelopment. In this sense, the work alludes to the exoticizing perspective that has characterized relations between the global north and south.
According to the artist, the use of the gold leaf technique—a tool she has used in series such as "La más castellana de América" (The most Castilian of America, 2016)—points to the "falsely sumptuous" while making visible the indigenous labor of gilding in religious contexts during Spanish colonization. Furthermore, the work offers a commentary on visual culture and gender representations. On this subject, he recalls a commercial that circulated in the 1970s in Ecuador—where it is common to have in domestic environments and in the media different allusions to the banana as a symbol—in which a banana, represented as a female figure, was sexualized while a group of men, considered "first world", indicated their lack of maturity.
For curator Amanda de la Garza, it is pertinent to highlight the space where the intervention is located in opposition to the museum environment; a contrast that produces a "condition of alienation.” On the spatial relationships, a product of the architectural thinking that runs through Argenzio's work, he offers the following commentary: "Three elements that allude to place and history can be extracted from this piece: an action through the process of gilding the piece, installation and intervention by performing this procedure in a place absolutely foreign to the museum space; and finally, in a linked way, gold as the metaphor of the great fortunes amassed by American companies and local landowners from the planting of bananas: the banana republics of America.”
This work was part of the Just do it! project, presented by the artist at the exhibition space of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) in Quito during 2011.
CGV- May, 2022
References
Agglomerations. María José Argenzio, exhibition sheet, MUAC-UNAM, México, 2016.
https://muac.unam.mx/exposicion/maria-jose-argenzio
http://museoamparo.noticiases.info/exposiciones/piezas/61/maria-jose-argenzio-aglomeraciones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOHGMqiQwaM
/artistas/perfil/309/maria-jose-argenzio
https://artecontemporaneoecuador.wordpress.com/maria-jose-argenzio/
The title of this work refers to the location coordinates of a site-specific intervention made by the artist in a banana plantation in Ecuador, her country of origin. Expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, they indicate the location of the facility with respect to the main parallel, the equator (latitude), and in of the Greenwich meridian (longitude). The documentation shows the tree coated with the gold leaf technique and an aerial view of the crop where it stands out, as an anomaly, due to the contrast in color.
Carried out in Machala, a city in the province of El Oro known as the banana capital of the world, the intervention refers to the processes of colonialism, slavery and exploitation that constitute a fundamental topic in the social and political history of the country, as well as, more broadly, of Latin America. As is well known, the pejorative expression "banana republics" has historically been used to refer not only to a common agricultural production in the region but also to a supposed condition of underdevelopment. In this sense, the work alludes to the exoticizing perspective that has characterized relations between the global north and south.
