No other fruit has quite the same comic or artistic standing as the humble banana. Throughout history we’ve seen its role mutate between comic device, musical icon, and a stark commentator of capitalism – all the while playing its lifelong role as the fruitbasket’s favourite class clown.
“When we first began talking about a banana book, we were intrigued by how spontaneously ideas emerged, one goofy idea came after another,” says John Schulisch, one half of Studio Trikken. This gave the Swedish duo the motivation to create an entire book of banana imagery, independently without any financial backing.
Banana Art Book does exactly what it says, featuring over 100 banana artworks created by artists, designers and illustrators. “We wanted every page to be different, so we aimed for a variety in both style, technique and type of participant,” says John. Alongside the images is a foreword by Ritupriya Basu, a creative essay by Heejae Kim, and interviews with select atists – “192 pages of joyful banana energy!”
Out of all the fruits, why bananas? “It has the ability to be so many things, and convey so many different meanings,” says Studio Trikken’s other half, Johan Elmehag. “The form is quirky, the colour is happy and cartoon characters slip on them… In this book the fruit is both a clown, an accountant and a dictator all at once. It showed us that when 100 people respond to the same brief you get so much more than the stereotypical.”