Bananas seem to pop up everywhere in art history from Paul Gaugin’s The Meal to Banksy’s Pulp Fiction, and of course Andy Warhol’s iconic Velvet Underground album cover. The fruit is both snack and symbol: it rots fast, it looks cheeky, and it somehow always stirs debate.

In recent years, nothing made the banana more famous in the art world than Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian – the duct-taped banana that became Instagram gold back in 2019. That one fruit taped to a wall fetched $120,000 (€114,000) and later went under the hammer again for $6.2 million (€5.8 million).

The buyer, crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, even ate the banana at a Hong Kong press conference, comparing it to the abstract world of cryptocurrency. Basically, it was all about concepts.

Now, Copenhagen has its own banana moment and it comes with a sharp feminist twist.

So, what’s new at Enter Art fair?

At Scandinavia’s biggest international art fair, Danish artist Thyra Hilden showed her own fruit-based piece titled Equal Satire. Instead of a banana taped to the wall, Hilden cut the fruit open so it resembled a vulva. The work quickly found a buyer for $12,869 (€11,066). A drop in the ocean compared to Comedian, but that was deliberate.

Why price it that way?

“Me and the gallerist have set the price to 10% of the original price of the banana, with the duct tape on the wall, a very famous piece,” said Hilden.

“And the 10% comes from that in the big auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's. And so, it's still only 10% of the turnover that goes to female artists.”

The numbers make her point clear: women artists still receive only a sliver of the art market’s top sales.

What does the artist want to spark?

Hilden says it’s about much more than a banana on display.

“I have created this work Equal satire, where I have cut a very potent figure into something very feminine and created a feminine force. And it's to spread humour, discussion around equality. It’s about opening dialogue on feminine equality in art.”

She hopes people will laugh, think, and above all, talk.

And what does the buyer think?

The artwork now belongs to Anders Andersen, founder of the office-share company Ordning. He agrees with the idea behind it.

“It's not worth paying that much amount for a banana, but when you have taken that discussion, then I hope next level will be that you will start to consider what the artist herself wants to tell with this piece of art," Andersen said.

He also has a very practical problem to deal with: bananas don’t last.

“In practice, it means I will be the biggest importer of bananas in Copenhagen, because I will have to renew this piece of art - or some of my employees will renew this piece of art - every day.”

Bananas and feminism – nothing new

From the Guerrilla Girls to Hilden today, the fruit has long been used to point out male dominance in the art world. Equal Satire is just the latest addition to that line, but one that carries its own playful punch.