Food for thought: Art student makes a meal of art installation

Here’s a story that’s ripe for the picking. A student ate a banana that was part of an art installation. His reasoning? He was hungry.

According to BBC News, a South Korean art student was visiting an installation by artist Maurizio Cattelan called “Comedian.” The artwork featured a ripe banana duct-taped to a wall at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art. 

The student, apparently famished, chose to satisfy his hunger by eating the banana. When he was finished, he taped the banana peel back to the wall. 

The museum reportedly replaced the banana with a fresh one, which they do every few days, and they don’t plan to press charges.

When Cattelan was asked his thoughts on his artwork being tampered with, he reportedly said, “No problem at all.” This isn’t the first time someone has eaten one of Cattelan’s bananas. At Art Basel in Miami in 2019, a performance artist pulled a banana off the wall and ate it after the artwork sold for $120,000.