Conceptual artist Anna Banana died on November 29 in Roberts Creek, British Columbia, Canada at the age of 84. As a pioneer in the fields of mail art, performance and alternative publishing, Banana has left an indelible mark on experimental practices and global networks. artist collaboration.
The artist was born Anne Lee Long on February 24, 1940, in Victoria, British Columbia. It was at the Experimental New School in Vancouver, where she taught elementary school students, In 1968, she earned the nickname “Anna Banana.” She then spent two years at Esalen College, embracing the nickname and legally changing her name in 2017 after dropping a box of bananas at a party in Big Sur in 1970. 1985.
“People are unhappy with my name,” the artist told journalist Portia Priegert in 2015. “Also, it’s usually sexual. Or it’s silly and childish.”
She started out as a textile artist but moved to more participatory forms in the 1970s. In 1971, Banana launched Absurdism Banana Raga newsletter connecting her with the International Mail Art Network (IMAN). In 1973, she moved to San Francisco, mixed with Bay Area Dadaists such as Bill Gaglione, and published Villers magazine, documenting the international mail art community’s critical response to General Idea document magazine (itself a pair of Life) has since abandoned its roots in the art of communication. She runs Banana Productions and publishes international art post, She calls her title “Top Banana.”
In 1984, Banana published her essay “Women in Mail Art” in “Women in Mail Art”. Communication Art: International Postal Art Activities Network Information Bookhighlighting the often overlooked contributions of women in the field, adapted from her 1978 introduction Villers The question is subtitled “Fe-Mail Art.”
“Anna Banana is a former internet networker and magazine publisher who uses her yellow paper to communicate across the globe. Banana Rag. She seeks out community in person and through mail—she is one of the most distinguished and productive members of the international mail art network,” Zana Gilbert, a senior research specialist and mail art scholar at the Getty Research Institute, told us allergic in an email.
In 2015, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria held a retrospective exhibition Anna Banana: Fooling around with A. Banana for 45 yearsDuring this period, the artist gave away approximately 1,200 items from her personal correspondence archive to exhibition visitors in a project called “Re-Giving Bananas.” Last year, bananas were included in the Copier Manifesto: The Artist Who Made a Magazine At the Brooklyn Museum.
Banana’s work does not explicitly engage with the politics of agriculture or the abuses of the industry, but her use of fruit as a symbol connects to broader conversations about global trade and cultural imagery. Her performances are highly interactive, as exemplified by her 1993 project “Proof that Germany is going bananas.” An ironic research tour of German cities explores what the artist calls the “new German banana consciousness” after reunification, when West Germans greeted East German citizens with once-scarce bananas.
Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019), an artwork composed of bananas taped to a wall, recently sold at Sotheby’s for $6.2 million came out and attracted the attention of the public and the market. But the banana, which has served the fruit as an artistic symbol for decades, offers a more nuanced approach. Her interesting take on this theme can be seen as an early example of how everyday objects can become powerful tools for social interaction and counter-market exchange.
“When entering Anna’s Suncoast home in Roberts Creek, you have to browse the archival shelves stacked with Bananology and her artamp-making machines,” says close friend and collaborator Vincent Trasov (who plays (another fictional character, Mr. Peanut, in the early 1970s) told allergic in an email. “However, the real order today is art and ideas. Anna found it all there.”
In January 2025, the Chert Lüdde in Berlin will exhibit a series of “Banana Greetings” and other mails from the Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Robert Rehfeldt Mail Art Archives , these emails are displayed in the gallery alongside works by Wolf-Rehfeldt and Trasov. “Anna’s language is known for its intensity, humor, sharp criticism and directness,” Jennifer Chert, owner of ChertLüdde, tells us. allergic. “Her presence in the archives enriches us tremendously.”
Banana’s legacy lies in her ability to create characters and communities both physically and conceptually. Her archive is housed in the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia.
She is survived by her daughter, Dana Long;
