Banana Craze: a Digital Humanities Project on Extractivism in the Americas
Blanca Serrano Ortiz de Solórzano, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA)
Monday, April 8
9:30-10:15am
DFA 2.204
Bananhattan, from the portfolio Manifestaciones, 2010
Banana Craze is a virtual exhibition, digital archive, and ongoing research project on the impact of banana monoculture and trade in the Americas through the lens of contemporary art.
Blanca Serrano Ortiz de Solórzano is Project Director at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) where she manages university and research programs, and is also series editor of ISLAA’s journal Vistas: Critical Approaches to Modern and Contemporary Art from Latin America and the Caribbean. She holds a doctorate in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU which was supported by “La Caixa” Foundation, among other fellowships. Her research focuses on discourses of intellectual and manual labor in visual culture and contemporary art from the Americas. Her writing is featured in academic publications, including most recently the Art Journal, and the edited volume Craft on Demand: The New Politics of the Handmade (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). Blanca is also an independent curator, and co-author with Juanita Solano Roa of the digital humanities project La fiebre del banano/Banana Craze (https://bananacraze.uniandes.edu.co/.)
