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Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

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  • Anna Banana

    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.

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The Belkin’s Outdoor Screen curated program runs from 9 am to 9 pm daily.

 

Currently

9 am – 9 pm, 1 MAY – 19 JUN 2025
Duration Description
29m 38s Anna Banana, Banana Olympics, 1980.

Upcoming

9 am – 9 pm, 20 JUN – 10 AUG 2025
Duration Description
28m 58s Anna Banana, April Fool’s Day Contest / Going Bananas Fashion Contest, 1982.

9 am – 9 pm, 11 AUG – SEP 03 2025

On Home and Haunting
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

    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.

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