The Banana Republican Dinner Party

2021 | Book Launch / Performance / Fundraiser Dinner at Theater Mitu | Brooklyn, New York

¡AGITPOP! Press book launch and fundraiser for the Colombian human rights watch NGO Temblores

The Banana Republican Dinner Party was a book launch for our ¡AGITPOP! Press publication “The Banana Republican Recipe Book” and a conceptual dinner party to raise funds for Temblores, a human rights watch NGO in Colombia. 

“The Banana Republican Recipe Book” (available in English and Spanish) is a satirical cookbook that recontextualizes archival United Fruit food photography to tell the history of US corporate/military malfeasance in Central America as if it were recipes. For this event we collaborated with Chef Simone Ver Eecke to literalize recipes from the book into a spectacular buffet of banana-themed dishes, backdropped by a video work I created that collages archival footage of United Fruit propaganda and advertising videos,  projection-mapped onto a 30-foot long screen suspended from the ceiling. We then collaborated with drag artist Theydy Bedbug to perform a dramatic monologue of the book’s introduction. All proceeds from ticket and book sales at the event went to support Temblores.