Anna Banana (Canadian, b. Anne Lee Frankham, 1940-2024) was a distinctive voice in the fields of conceptual, performance and mail art, playfully resist the status quo through her artistic practice. She has been described as a conceptualist rather than an image maker, with her artistic activities spiralling out and giving rise to new projects, utilizing whatever media the concept required. As a performance artist, Anna Banana created interactive events as a way of engaging audiences to become active participants. She was active in the international mail art network since 1971, adopting her pseudonym this same year and providing materials and ideas for other work and an ongoing connection to an international community of artists who are, like her, more interested in creating and exchanging ideas and small artworks than they are in producing art for a market. From the 1960s, Anna Banana met and collaborated with numerous Vancouver-based mail artists, including Ken Friedman, Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov, Gary Lee-Nova, Dana Atchley, Eric Metcalfe, Kate Craig and Glenn Lewis, sending out her Banana Rag newsletter. Between 1973 and 1981, Banana lived in San Francisco where she collaborated with Bill Gaglione of Dadaland and the Bay Area Dadaists, and began publishing VILE magazine, a counterpart to General Idea’s FILE Megazine, itself a parody of LIFE magazine. Anna Banana returned to Vancouver in 1981 where she continued her practice as a performance artist, spending her final years on the Sunshine Coast, BC. In 2021, Anna Banana donated her artwork and paper archive to the Belkin and UBC Rare Books and Special Collections respectively; the Belkin’s holdings include exchanges with artists in the International Mail Art Network, issues of VILE magazine, costumes from the artist’s performances and a selection of her Artistamp editions, among other items.
The Belkin’s Outdoor Screen curated program runs from 9 am to 9 pm daily.
9 am – 9 pm, 1 MAY – 19 JUN 2025 |
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Duration | Description |
29m 38s | Anna Banana, Banana Olympics, 1980. |
9 am – 9 pm, 20 JUN – 10 AUG 2025 |
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Duration | Description |
28m 58s | Anna Banana, April Fool’s Day Contest / Going Bananas Fashion Contest, 1982. |
9 am – 9 pm, 11 AUG – SEP 03 2025On Home and Haunting |
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Duration | Description | 5m | Hân Phạm, Once Upon a Time, 2020. |
9m | Luis Andrés Serrano, Homebody, 2024. |
3m 30s | Adam Garnet Jones, Demonstration of indianness #31, 2006. |
Anna Banana (Canadian, b. Anne Lee Frankham, 1940-2024) was a distinctive voice in the fields of conceptual, performance and mail art, playfully resist the status quo through her artistic practice. She has been described as a conceptualist rather than an image maker, with her artistic activities spiralling out and giving rise to new projects, utilizing whatever media the concept required. As a performance artist, Anna Banana created interactive events as a way of engaging audiences to become active participants. She was active in the international mail art network since 1971, adopting her pseudonym this same year and providing materials and ideas for other work and an ongoing connection to an international community of artists who are, like her, more interested in creating and exchanging ideas and small artworks than they are in producing art for a market. From the 1960s, Anna Banana met and collaborated with numerous Vancouver-based mail artists, including Ken Friedman, Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov, Gary Lee-Nova, Dana Atchley, Eric Metcalfe, Kate Craig and Glenn Lewis, sending out her Banana Rag newsletter. Between 1973 and 1981, Banana lived in San Francisco where she collaborated with Bill Gaglione of Dadaland and the Bay Area Dadaists, and began publishing VILE magazine, a counterpart to General Idea’s FILE Megazine, itself a parody of LIFE magazine. Anna Banana returned to Vancouver in 1981 where she continued her practice as a performance artist, spending her final years on the Sunshine Coast, BC. In 2021, Anna Banana donated her artwork and paper archive to the Belkin and UBC Rare Books and Special Collections respectively; the Belkin’s holdings include exchanges with artists in the International Mail Art Network, issues of VILE magazine, costumes from the artist’s performances and a selection of her Artistamp editions, among other items.
With the opening of the Image Bank exhibition on June 18, 2021, the gallery is pleased to launch the Outdoor Screen, a 4x2 metre outdoor screen curated with media works from the Belkin’s permanent collection and archive alongside work commissioned specifically for this platform.
[more]From 1 May to 19 June 2025, the Belkin’s outdoor screen will show Anna Banana’s Banana Olympics (1980) daily between 9 am and 9 pm. And from 20 June to 10 August 2025, the Belkin’s outdoor screen will show Anna Banana’s April Fool’s Day Contest / Going Bananas Fashion Contest (1982) daily between 9 am and 9 pm.
[more]As we remember BC artist Anna Banana (1940-2024), who was a pioneer in the mail art movement from 1971, we are pleased to share her 1998 work Bananas in Distress, newly digitized thanks to the generous support of the BC History Digitization Program at UBC.
[more]The Belkin shares the community’s sadness at the recent passing of artist Anna Banana on November 29 in Sechelt, BC. Born in Victoria as Anne Lee Long, Anna Banana was a conceptual, performance and mail artist who adopted her pseudonym in 1971 when she began corresponding with the international mail art network (including Image Bank) and sending out her Banana Rag newsletter.
[more]This mailing from the Morris/Trasov Archive by the Victoria-born mail artist Anna Banana to Image Bank co-founder Michael Morris will be included in the Brooklyn Museum’s upcoming exhibition Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Making Zines opening 17 November 2023.
[more]From 11 August until 3 September 2025, the Belkin's outdoor screen will show On Home and Haunting; a film program featuring three short films by Hân Phạm, Adam Garnet Jones and Luis Andrés Serrano.
[more]As part of the Belkin's outdoor screen exhibition On Home and Haunting, please join us for a talk with two of the exhibiting artists, Hân Phạm and Luis Andrés Serrano, centred around their respective films, Once Upon a Time (2020) and Homebody (2024). The conversation will be moderated by curator Fegor Obuwoma.
[more]