Once again, Art Basel Miami Beach has gone bananas—but this time, the fruit is free, and you might get a really cool Chiquita banana bag to go with it.

On the heels of the headline-making $6.2 million sale of Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s conceptual artwork featuring a real banana affixed to the wall with duct tape, Chiquita has set up a booth where fairgoers can grab a quick snack—and pose for photos, naturally.

“We decided to bring a little light spirited fun and good nutrition to the fair,” Juliana Furlan, the company’s head of marketing for North America, told me.

As we were speaking, a large line had formed as visitors jockeyed to get their hands on what was quickly becoming Miami Art Week’s most coveted accessory: a bright yellow bag with blue piping and handles, prominently sporting the Chiquita logo.

The Chiquita banana stand at Art Basel Miami Beach. Photo courtesy of Chiquita.

“It’s the best swag I’ve ever gotten,” a writer told me later that day—and while art journalists aren’t particularly well paid, we do get some pretty good swag.

You might think that Chiquita had to act fast to capitalize on the banana frenzy fueled by last month’s action, but the synergetic Art Basel activation was already in the works before the Sotheby’s sale hit the news cycle. The brand did a similar project during Milan Design Week back in April, with a campaign with Brazilian artist Romero Britto called “Pop by Nature.”

“The timing was great,” Furlan said. “We consider Chiquita part of pop culture in the U.S., and we’re excited to be part of this great event.”

The Chiquita banana stand at Art Basel Miami Beach. Photo courtesy of Chiquita.

The now infamous banana sculpture made its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019, when the Paris and New York gallery Perrotin was hawking them for $120,000 each.

After the first two editions sold in mere hours, the dealer promptly raised the price to $150,000.

Even that princely sum pales in comparison to the Sotheby’s auction result—and, of course, the 25 cents an auction house employee spent on the physical banana at a fruit stand manned by a 74-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant named Shah Alam.

The Chiquita banana stand at Art Basel Miami Beach. Photo courtesy of Chiquita.

The astronomical price paid for a humble piece of fruit lays bare the inequities not only in the art world, but beyond. The Feed Foundation, a nonprofit fighting global hunger, held a protest outside Sotheby’s following the sale.

The buyer was Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, who promptly ate the banana. (The idea is to replace the fruit every few days as it begins to brown; the late artist David Datuna famously consumed the original Comedian at the 2019 fair.)

The Chiquita banana stand at Art Basel Miami Beach. Photo courtesy of Chiquita.

Sun also pledged to buy 100,000 bananas from Alam’s stand, although the fruit seller is just an employee, and would not stand to reap the profits. (A GoFundMe campaign raised over $19,000 for Alam.)

At the fair’s current edition, there are two banana stands, one at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, across the street from the convention center, and the other inside, in the north lobby. The bags are being given out at set times during the first two days of the fair. Starting Friday, you’ll have the opportunity to win one by peeling the sticker off your banana to see if you get a prize.

 

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The feel-good brand installation does mask a dark side to Chiquita. In a June, a Florida court ordered the company to pay $38 million United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia victims and their families, ruling that Chiquita had funded the paramilitary group. The company has long been accused of propping exploitative “banana republics.”

Ahead of the fair, Argentinian art collector Benedicta Badia criticized brand’s partnership with Art Basel as a form of art washing, noting that the art world is “one of the strongest communities in the world against colonialism, exploitation, illegal expropriations, massacres, labor abuse, environmental destruction, slavery etc.,” and decrying “the unfathomable destruction and pain you [Chiquita] have caused Latin America.”