Banana Republic
Shinji Nagabe

The photo series Banana Republic is Shinji Nagabe’s response to a state of political disillusionment and social disenchantment, in which violence and religious extremism reign and individual freedom is in retreat. In the fiction created by Nagabe, the state finds itself under the yoke of a cruel populist dictator; bananas are used to obscure and censor, while resistance groups use them to make weapons and bombs. This surrealistic photo series, both bitter and sardonic, plunges us into a fictional republic, ironically sending us to the same level of fantasy as some present-day discourses and questioning the role of the individual within a community.

Year of production: 2018-2019