Mail Art Pioneer Anna Banana Dies at 84
The artist’s playful adoption of the banana motif transformed an everyday object into a vehicle for social interaction and anti-market exchange.
by Liz Hirsch 
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“On entering Anna’s house on the Sunshine Coast in Roberts Creek, you had to navigate the archive shelves stacked with Bananology and her artistamp production machine,” Vincent Trasov, a close friend and collaborator based in Vancouver and Berlin (who assumed another fictional persona, Mr. Peanut, in the early 1970s), told Hyperallergicin an email. “The real order of the day, however, was art and ideas. Anna found everything there.”
In January 2025, ChertLüdde in Berlin will exhibit a selection of “Banana Greetings” and other mailings from the Mail Art Archive of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Robert Rehfeldt, which is housed at the gallery, alongside works by Wolf-Rehfeldt and Trasov. “Anna’s language is distinguished by intensity, humor, sharp criticism, and directness as few others,” ChertLüdde owner Jennifer Chert told Hyperallergic. “Her presence in the archive enriches us immensely.”
Banana’s legacy lies in her ability to build both persona and community, physically and conceptually. Her archive is housed at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia.
She is survived by her daughter, Dana Long.
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