Tropical Fruit in European Still Lifes

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Still from “Tropical Fruit in European Still Lifes,” by Astria Suparak, video, 2024

“Tropical Fruit in European Still Lifes“

Astria Suparak
Looped slide show with animation and sound (available on video), 7.5 minutes
2024
Created for the 2024 Carnegie Museum of Art Film Series
https://bit.ly/tropicalfruitineuropeanstilllifes

Tropical fruits were employed as symbols of status, luxury, and fashion by European painters and their patrons from the Colonial Era through the early 20th century. What may be broadly viewed as benign paintings from dusty art history books point to still-reverberating and repeating histories of colonialism, trade, and sources of European and American wealth through extraction — which funded the formation of many museum collections.

The animated slide show includes images from the Carnegie Museum of Art’s collection of European still life paintings featuring tropical fruit. This is interspersed with a medley of quotes about the fruits’ histories, production, trade, and intersections with colonial desire from art, literary, archeological, scientific, economic, news and popular culture sources. 

With image research assistance from Tiffany Sims, CMOA Curatorial Fellow.

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SCREENINGS

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Vivid Sunsets Over Glistening Oceans, May 25, 2024

The tropics exist as a dreamy respite from “real” life… for some people. White-made media reinforces a racialized, exotic vacation trope, training their cameras on and constructing sets with gangly palm trees, pristine beaches, glistening oceans, and deferential Pacific Islander, Asian, Caribbean, and/or Indigenous people. That is the cherry-picked, colonialist view of tropical lands. Wish you weren’t here.

This program features three short films, the premiere of a new video artwork, and a feature-length film that all expand viewers’ understandings of what the tropics are. Dessane Lopez Cassell, New York-based editor, writer, and curator, will introduce the films.

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