Ban on banana-eating artwork draws ridicule

WARSAW (AP):

A few hundred mostly young people jointly ate bananas outside Warsaw’s top national gallery on Monday to protest what they called censorship, after authorities removed artwork there featuring the fruit, saying it was improper.

The protest was called by artists and opposition politicians as part of their action, on Facebook and Twitter, of posting photos of themselves eating bananas in order to ridicule the ban. The action grew into a show of apparent criticism of the government.

The 1973 video Consumer Art, by prominent artist Natalia LL, showing a young woman eating a banana with great pleasure, was removed from the National Museum in Warsaw last week after the new museum head, Jerzy Miziolek, was summoned to the Ministry of Culture.

Miziolek said in an interview with the Onet.pl portal last week that he was “opposed to showing works that could irritate sensitive young people” and suggested some visitors have complained. The work had been in the gallery for many years.

A separate 2005 video by another controversial female artist, Katarzyna Kozyra, showing a woman walking two men on all fours, dressed as dogs on a lead, was also removed.

On Monday, Miziolek announced that the works would be reinstated, but only until May 6, when the whole modern art gallery is due for reorganisation. Miziolek and the Ministry of Culture denied there was any pressure on the museum.

Miziolek, who was appointed to the state-run museum by the right-wing government in November, said Monday he appreciated the role of both artists in Poland’s culture, but the gallery’s limited space requires “creative changes” to the exhibition.

String of controversies

The dispute is the latest in a string of controversies surrounding art and culture under the conservative and nationalist government that won power in 2015.

Culture Minister Piotr Glinski has repeatedly drawn criticism for cutting subsidies to art festivals that were planning to show controversial theater plays on Catholic themes. Glinski has fired a popular theatre director who criticised him as well as the director of a World War II museum, saying the exhibition did not show Poland’s suffering or heroism enough.

He recently cut funds for the European Solidarity Center, an exhibition on the Solidarity movement’s history and a culture centre popular with government critics, saying its activity went beyond its history-teaching mission.

Twitter and Facebook users ridiculed the removal of the artworks as narrow-minded and a case of censorship, and many posted photos of themselves enjoying bananas.