Seoul, a student eats Cattelan's banana at the exhibition, and sticks the peel to the wall

A student ate Cattelan’s banana: It happened in Seoul, at the Leem Museum of Art, where a student from Seoul National University who was visiting the exhibition Maurizio Cattelan. We, the largest monographic exhibition of the Paduan artist since the one at the Guggenheim in 2011 (on display in South Korea’s capital are 38 works from the 1990s to the present), peeled off Comedian, the world-famous banana taped to the wall, from the wall and devoured it. “The student told the museum that he ate the banana because he was hungry”-that was the surreal statement a spokesperson for the institution gave CNN during a phone call. And after eating the banana, the student, whose name is Noh Huyn-Soo and is an aesthetics major, taped the peel to the wall. “It all happened suddenly, so no action was taken,” added the museum spokesman. “The artist was informed of the incident but there was no reaction from him.”

Comedian had gone viral when it was first unveiled in 2019, at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair (at the booth of the Perrotin gallery representing the artist), and sold for $120,000. And there is no doubt that the Korean student’s action will also resonate widely, not least because, moreover, a friend of the student filmed the entire action and posted it on social media. Despite someone protesting, the student continued to eat as if nothing had happened, and then fixed the peel to the wall and left. The Leem Museum of Art has already made it known that it will not seek damages from the student.

The “incident,” if you want to call it that, took place on Thursday, April 27, around 12:30 p.m., although in Western media the news bounced only today. The whole thing lasted barely a minute. The peel remained stuck to the wall for half an hour, after which the museum proceeded to replace it with another banana (as it has been doing since the exhibition began). “Cattelan’s work,” Hyun-Soo later explained to local newspaper KBS News, where the entire video of the action can also be seen, “is in a way a rebellion against a certain authority. But actually it could also be a rebellion against rebellion.”

This is not the first time someone has eaten Cattelan’s banana. On the contrary: it happened almost immediately, in the very same edition of Art Basel Miami Beach in which it was presented. A Georgian artist, the then 45-year-old David Datuna (who passed away in May 2022) had gone to Perrotin’s booth with the idea of doing a performance, to which he had given the title Hungry artist (“starving artist”), and ate the banana. The gallery had simply replaced it. Exactly as the museum will do: whoever buys the work, buys a certificate of authenticity (as many as three were sold during that edition of the fair), which prescribes that the owner of the work can replace the banana whenever replacement becomes necessary.

Seoul, a student eats Cattelan's banana at the exhibition, and sticks the peel to the wall

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