field research, preserved United Fruit Company engineering house, Prado Sevilla, Magdalena, 2024
Unknown photographer, “Sevilla Prado-Engineering office in the foreground, circa 1925”, 8×10 inches, United Fruit Company Photograph Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. [UF76.035, ID 4089306]
bananeras, el caribe, el paisaje y el movimiento, 2024-2025, oingoing research project
The starting point of this research project was noticing how fruits and vegetables in Germany were labeled with their place of origin. Although buying produce in a supermarket is a given mundanity of urban life, I became interested in the reasoning behind labeling products in this way, as it reflects systems of global distribution and trade. Since Colombia is one of the world’s largest banana exporters, I was not surprised to see “colombian” bananas in German supermarkets, and I could not help but think about my own experience of migration, and the systems supporting the global distribution of bananas, as it is a fruit tied to significant colonial connotations: in regions such as the Colombian Caribbean, banana cultivation has been associated with systemic violence, land disputes, and alliances between companies and armed groups, a legacy of the United Fruit Company’s monopolistic expansion in the 1920s.
This artistic research project aims to investigate the intersection of agricultural production, global trade, migration and colonialism, exploring how conflict and trauma are symbolically inscribed either on the landscape or in personal experiences. Until now, it has consisted on field documentation and traditional research on the photographic archive of the United Fruit Company. At the core of the research is the idea of a perceptual contradiction: the tension between how an image portrays a place and what is known or omitted about this place, raising the question of how to address violence that is both tangible and intangible, visible yet also invisible.
field research, near ciénaga, magdalena, colombia, 2024
field research, hamburg port, 2025
United Fruit Company Photography Collection, Unknown photographer. “View of cut and wrecked telephone lines such as mang others after revolution, Colombia, Dec. 10, 1928” [UF30.127, ID 4083514]; 7,5 x 9,5 inches, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. [4084437]