Gonzalo Fuenmayor

Miami-based Gonzalo Fuenmayor studied for a master's degree at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), where he was known as “the banana man” because he drew bananas. He had grown tired of making works that explored drugs, violence and other social problems that Americans associated with their homeland, and in bananas he found a gold mine. The SMFA awarded Fuenmayor a travel grant in 2013. Drawing inspiration from the cultural sources he has collected throughout his own life experience, Fuenmayor has posed, through a masterful use of drawing, reflections revolving around identity, socio-political markers, conceptions about development, idiosyncrasies of the tropics and imaginaries about the global south that emanate from northern geographies.