Rotten Fruit - 2022-2024
Rotten Fruit is a research artist project that peels back the layers to reveal the United Fruit Company's growth into Central and South America; the work addresses the complicated colonial history of those regions. Giselle Mira-Diaz refers to the discernible realities of conceptual thought surrounding archived materials that disappear between Western and European colonized narratives. Mira-Diaz received the Stuart Abelson Graduate Research Fellowship from Columbia College Chicago to travel to Costa Rica and Colombia throughout the summer of 2023. Her purpose was to obtain exclusive access to documents, photographs, and oral histories that are specifically housed in archives located in South and Central America. By interrogating these materials, Giselle produces a contemporary response through photography, video, performance, and other mixed-media interventions. The work aims to reveal forgotten historical narratives that are connected to the social frameworks and imperialistic hegemony of American corporations, which have historically and presently maintained authority over land, economic output, and labor in Central and South America. These pieces cover the loss of life sanctioned by The United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita Banana), resulting in the murders and disappearances of Banana workers and their families, and the destruction of the land and environment through the harmful malpractice of Banana monocultures.