Above the Fruited Plain (America! America!)
2021 | Geary Contemporary for NADA House | New York, NY
Above the Fruited Plain (America! America!) is centered around the violent legacy of American intervention—corporate and military—in Central America and the Caribbean. Capitalizing on the defunct domestic interiors of Governor’s Island’s Colonel’s Row houses as exhibition space, the installation calls attention to the violences that haunt our domestic bliss, whether we are conscious of it or not.
The installation consists of 4 elements: a rug, wallpaper, work on paper and a recipe book. The machine-tufted rug, War Rug X (Banana Republics/US Intervention in Latin America), is part of the ongoing War Rugs From America series which use the material and visual narrative strategies of Afghan War Rugs to interrogate state-sanctioned violence in America. War Rug X applies this rhetoric to the history of United Fruit Co. (now Chiquita Brands International) and the creation of Banana Republics in Central America. The maximalist wallpaper uses graphic 1960’s patterning to subvert the images of 32 violent right-wing dictators in Central America/ the Caribbean—whose repressive regimes were all backed by the US government (from 1899-1990). The work on paper, The Chemical Composition Of a Coup, subverts a diagram from a 1950’s Chiquita Banana recipe book—detailing the chemical composition of a fully-ripe banana—to examine US government involvement in the 1954 Guatemalan Coup overthrowing the Arbenz administration (one of more than 15 military coups in Latin America in which the CIA played a pivotal role). Lastly, the exhibition features “Banana Republican Recipe Book,” a publication created in collaboration with writer Cara Marsh Sheffler. The book subverts the aesthetic of a 1970’s Chiquita Banana recipe book in service of detailing the violent history of US intervention and exploitation in Central America. The original recipe books were released by United Fruit from the 1940’s-1970’s—for the target audience of American housewives—complete with robust servings of racism, cultural imperialism, and corporate tone-deafness. “The Banana Republican Recipe Book” mimes the visual and linguistic tone of these books to reveal their underlying violence.
