David Datuna: The Artist Behind the Banana that Shook the World
David Datuna: The Man, The Myth, The Banana
David Datuna understood something fundamental about art, something that eludes many: it is not just about the object—it is about the moment. About context. About the collective gasp, the murmur of the crowd, the instant when provocation turns into permanence. In 2019, when he famously peeled Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana off the gallery wall at Art Basel Miami and ate it, Datuna wasn’t just consuming fruit—he was digesting the absurdity of the art market itself. And in doing so, he became part of the artwork, perhaps even the most important part.
It is easy to remember him for that moment, to distil his legacy down to a single act of subversion. But Datuna was never a prankster. He was a serious artist, one who understood that sometimes, to be taken seriously, you had to not take things seriously at all. Born in Georgia (the country, not the state), he carried with him an outsider’s gaze—a keen awareness of art as both a personal language and a global currency. His Viewpoint of Millions series, layering fragmented optical lenses over images of history’s power players, was a meditation on perspective, on who gets to be seen and who does the seeing. His work was as much about vision as it was about visibility.
And yet, it was the banana that made history. A simple, perishable object, given arbitrary value, devoured in a gesture that was equal parts Duchampian and deeply, viscerally human. Datuna called it “Hungry Artist”, an apt name not just for the performance but for the man himself—hungry for discourse, for meaning, for a world that could take itself both more and less seriously.
Art history will remember him, fondly and rightfully so, not just as the man who ate a banana, but as the artist who knew exactly what he was doing when he did. A provocateur with purpose. A visionary with a sense of humour. A reminder that art is, in the end, only as powerful as the conversations it starts. And David Datuna, with a single, audacious bite, made sure that conversation would never end.
