Banana and Scotch installation to be shown in Russia

The installation “Comediant”, which is a banana stuck with gray tape, will be shown at the exhibition “Things, Idols, Bananas” at the House of Culture “HES-2” in Moscow. This was reported by the press service of the museum.

“The Prospect will feature about 50 works created in different epochs and in different parts of the world: from the Paleolithic Venus and medieval Buddhas to the Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan,” the exhibition description says.

The exhibition will be held from December 4, 2026 to April 4, 2027.

“Comediant” was first presented in December 2019 at the Art Basel Contemporary Art Fair in Miami. To create the installation, the artist used an ordinary banana bought in a supermarket. In total, Cattelan created three copies of the work, two of which sold $120,000 each, and the third was donated to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Shortly after the exhibition opened, artist David Datuna ripped a banana off the wall and ate it in front of visitors, calling the event the "Hungry Artist" performance. In 2023, a similar case occurred in a museum in Seoul, where a student ate an exposed banana, explaining his act as hunger. In both cases, the fruit was replaced with new ones.

In November 2024, a copy of The Comedian was sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $6.2 million. The buyer was cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, who later also ate the purchased banana.

In June 2026, the installation was again in the spotlight after the banana disappeared from an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France. The museum appealed to the police, but the art object was quickly restored, replacing the fruit with a new one.