Banana for Sale
Dallas Cant
2018

Inside of the sealed Banana Guard ™ you’ll find 18 sized-down self-portraits, one plastic/fabric rose, a 53mm vegan condom, a miniature yard flamingo, bubble wrap, a fabric swatch, and a $5 Canadian bill clipped with 3 glittery pink hair pins all sitting in a bed of diamond-like plastic gems. Additionally, small drawings done with acrylic paint and felt tipped markers on clear velum sit transparently and sporadically over the self-portraits. Banana and honey yellow embroidery thread puncture a selection of images and recycled cardboard pieces to read ‘CUNT, ‘BUY’, and ‘TAINT’.

This work explores a materialized process of self-commodification and the multiplicity of performative identity formation as a queer, fat, femme, sex worker. The Banana Guard™ as form functions to literally reflect the space of commodification Banana for Sale is situated within, but also, allows the viewer to interact with the contents in a non-linear process. The interaction between material self-portraiture and packaged ready-to-purchase goods suggest that processes of identity formation are interconnected with capitalist structures that require branded and easily identifiable/consumable product. The embroidered dirrty words reflect a vocabulary of hegemonic porn that hold already existing meaning in terms of body and audience categorization. By working within the aesthetic and text tropes of (queer) porn, I am able to demand an active valuing of porn as art, sex worker as artist, and sex work as labour.