Anna Banana

Banana Olympics, 1980
video, 29 m 38 s
Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Anna Banana collection

April Fool’s Day Contest / Going Bananas Fashion Contest, 1982
video, 29 m 19 s
Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Anna Banana collection

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.

Born in Victoria, BC as Anne Lee Frankham, 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 and sending out her Banana Rag newsletter in conjunction with her Town Fool performances. Between 1973 and 1981, Banana lived in San Francisco where she collaborated with the Bay Area Dadaists, publishing VILE magazine and creating interactive performance works including the Banana Olympics. In much the same was as Fluxus artists, Banana’s public events engaged her audiences in these creative acts, with participants becoming artists and vice versa, critiquing the mainstream art world through performance and parody. In the artist’s words, “I focus not on making things, but on making things happen.”

In 1971 and 1972, Banana took on the role of Victoria’s Town Fool, performing in the city’s Bastion Square on April Fool’s Day and distributing her newsletter, Banana Rag, to local schools where she offered to teach workshops to the students. Banana dressed in a rainbow costume and crown, both of which now reside in the Belkin’s collection. Banana Rag was a platform to announce her artistic projects, and became the vehicle that connected Banana with the local mail artists of the period and to the larger mail art network that became intrinsic to her practice for the next five decades.

In 1974 while living in San Francisco, Banana took a job at the San Francisco Bay Guardian pasting up advertising pages. She filled the empty spaces in the advertising columns with invitations to her events; the first entry was for the 1974 Columbus Day Parade, offering “degrees of Bananology” to those who participated or sent banana news. In 1975, the Guardian ran a full-page ad for her Banana Olympics, which was held at the Embarcadero Plaza on Easter Sunday, March 30, 1975. Olympians participated in a series of events, including the Banana Music Contest, the Overhand Banana Throw, the Belly-to-Belly Banana Race and the Banana Eating Contest, in which participants were judged on their ability to amuse the audience while eating a banana. The winners were selected based on costume and style with the most “appeal.”

Anna Banana reprised the Banana Olympics in 1980 at the Bear Creek Oval Athletic Field in Surrey, BC. At the invitation of Surrey Art Gallery curator Rosa Ho, the event was funded by the Canada Council, the BC Arts Council and the municipality of Surrey. Originally planned for April Fool’s Day, the event was delayed until 13 July while Ho defended it to a Surrey municipal councillor who believed the event was not art. In reference to this debate, Banana included the Bureaucrat’s Marathon as part of the Olympics: three steps forward, two steps backwards and one to each side. The event was interactive and satirically silly. With over 100 participants, Anna Banana encouraged the idea of clownery against serious athletic competition, inviting any and all to participate in the creation of art.

In 1982, on her tenth anniversary of April Fool’s events, Anna Banana mounted the Going Bananas Fashion Contest hosted live on CKVU’s Vancouver Show. Audience members dressed in banana-related costumes, cheering on the 35 participants who dressed as a banana tree, a piranha-banana and a prima bananarina, among others. During intermissions, guests made banana-themed drinks and a band played banana-themed songs.