Hungry student finds Maurizio Cattelan’s $160,000 banana ripe for the taking at Korea museum

SEOUL – Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic art piece Comedian – a ripe banana duct-taped to a wall and on display at an art museum in Seoul – was eaten by a college student on Thursday in an act he described as “artwork”.

The work is part of Cattelan’s solo exhibition WE now running at the Leeum Museum of Art.

At the event showing some 38 works from the 1990s, the student took the banana, peeled it and ate it. He reattached the peel to the wall using the existing tape.

When the museum staff asked why he ate it, the student, who is an art major at Seoul National University, replied that he had skipped breakfast and was hungry.

In an interview later with a local broadcaster, he confessed that he thought “damaging a work of modern art could also be (interpreted as a kind of) artwork”. He added that he came up with the idea to reattach the banana peel, thinking it was a fun way of looking at it.

Cattelan’s banana is being replaced every two to three days, according to the artist’s instructions provided before the exhibition. Meanwhile, the museum has decided not to claim damages against the student.

This was not the first time a banana exhibit by the provocative artist was swiped off the wall and eaten.

In 2019, a performance artist named David Datuna took the banana on display at the Perrotin gallery at Art Basel in Miami minutes after it was sold for US$120,000 (S$160,000), and ate it.

A video of Datuna

eating the banana with great relish

went viral on social media.

Cattelan’s first solo exhibition in South Korea at the Leeum runs through July 16.
THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS

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