Drawing on his pop sensibility and skill for rendering everyday objects as larger-than-life public works and playful soft sculptures, artist Claes Oldenburg’s (b. 1929 in Stockholm; d. 2022 in New York, NY) poster for Artists’ Call Against US Intervention in Central America (1984) wryly depicts a group of people toppling a banana statue, as if it were a monument of a corrupt and typically male leader. Fruit has featured in Oldenburg’s other works, but this specific invocation recalls the term “banana republic,” which has been used to describe the ways US corporations, such as United Fruit (now Chiquita Brands International), cozied up with the ruling business, political, and military elites of Central American countries. These forces in power controlled access to the primary economic sector of plantation agriculture and enabled the economic exploitation of the large, impoverished working class.
According to artist Doug Ashford, a New York organizing member and part of Group Material, Artists’ Call was a nationwide mobilization of writers, artists, activists, artist organizations, and solidarity groups that began in New York in 1983. Group Material’s summer 1982 exhibition, Luchar! For the People of Central America, was an early galvanizing point that kicked off over 200 exhibitions, concerts, and other public events over one year. According to Ashford, “These events increased awareness of our government’s involvement in state terrorism across the hemisphere, linked the notion of aesthetic emancipation to revolutionary politics, and provided concrete resources for the cultural workers and public intellectuals in the region and in exile. Thousands of dollars were raised and sent to cultural organizations that were part of the moment for self-determination in the region.”
