CARMEN BANANA
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Introducing......
CARMEN BANANA
"Cooking with Carmen" is a new body of work from my ongoing multimedia project titled 'Big Banana Time Inc.' Big Banana Time Inc. is an ongoing site-specific body of work dedicated to exploring the vital role of cultural tourism and highway culture to the Australian economy. The work may also be seen as a critique of the genres of portrait and landscape in Australian art. This work is due to be launched at 'Launch sites' as part of MAAP in September.
Carmen Banana is the face of Big Banana Time Inc. Carmen made her offical debut in 1998 as a digital collage for griller girls - an exhibition of works by female new media artists curated by Di Ball for Volt-the new performance in 1998.
Carmen Banana has been inspired by a number of women bearing the same name. Carmen Miranda is of course the primary identity attached to this persona. The femme fatale character in Georges Bizet's masterwork 'Carmen' is also a contributing influence. Bizet's Carmen was, according to Germaine Greer (HQ magazine) a real person of gypsy heritage, who organised workers in a cigarette factory in Spain.
With Carmen Miranda inparticular, there is a desire to play with such artifical contructions of feminine identity and experience of the world.....a return to childhood realms of the fantastic....nostalgia has many issues with childhood.....Within Carmen's character there is a two fold interest - the process of representation inherent in the manifestation of nostalgia >its contrived production - and as a vehicle to 'act out' attitudes/behaviours/experiences through existing representations esp. about those aspects of myself which i find strange and hard to grapple with - the foriegn part of myself.
In this new work she comes to the fore with her interactive and caustic cooking book. Carmen hopes you enjoy her foray into culinary culture....
