The Bruised Banana Art of Anna Chojnicka

The Covid-19 lockdowns have had a very different effect on people. While the boredom made some depressed, it actually helped others discover hidden talents. Take Anna Chojnicka, who started creating adorable banana peel artworks.

To pass the time and keep her creative juices flowing, social entrepreneur Anna Chojnicka started experimenting with banana peel oxidation as an art medium. Instead of doodling on canvas or paper, she decided to simply bruise bananas with thin, blunt objects and let oxidation do the rest. The bruised peel becomes darker as the hours go by, revealing the design etched into it.

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Banana Tattooing, an Increasingly Popular Art Form

Up until a few years ago, people rarely looked at bananas as anything more than delicious fruits, let alone as an art medium. But that was before artists started taking advantage of the banana peel’s oxidation process to create amazing artworks. Today, more and more artists are becoming specialized in banana oxidation art, also known as banana tattooing.

Banana peel may seem like a strange canvas too some, but it’s also one that can yield some pretty impressive results. Case in point, the amazing artworks of End Cape, a young Japanese artist who specializes in bruising bananas. Using a sharp tool like a simple needle or a thumbtack, he spends up to five hours puncturing the peel of the tropical fruit and creating breathtaking masterpieces inspired by popular anime, traditional Japanese art and famous landmarks. The process is very similar to that used by regular tattoo artists, only without the paint. In contact with air, the bruised sections of the banana turn brown, revealing artist’s designs. Apparently, the colder the fruit is, the faster it oxidizes. By controlling the density of needle holes, End Cape is able to create different textures and shades of brown.

banana-tattoos

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Talented Artist Tattoos Celebrity Portraits on Bananas

Honey is a talented graphic artist and designer from the Philippines, who occupies her free time by turning bananas into organic works of art. Her only tool – a common safety pin.

Even when she’s not working with big names like Mercedes Benz, Seiko, Yamaha, Takamine, Carrows, or Volvo, Honey likes to be creative. Constantly trying to expand her range of abilities, she came up with a way of making art from household fruit. “When I’m not sitting in front of a computer, I’m always looking for something creative to do,” she says on her blog. “We always have bananas in the house so then, I thought maybe I could draw on them but it wasn’t easy as I thought it would be. I kept puncturing the skin with my pen.” After noticing that the  peel turned brown after being exposed to air, she decided to use this oxidation process to her advantage, and replaced the pen with a the first sharp and pointy thing she could get her hands on – a safety pin. Using the same technique as tattoo artists, Honey pierces the skin of the banana peel hundreds of times, in specific patterns, creating beautiful ephemeral portraits of celebrities.

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Banana Tattooist Turns Fruits into Awesome Artworks

Multimedia artist Phil Hansen uses a technique similar to pointillism to turn ripe bananas into organic canvases, recreating some of history’s most famous artworks.

If this offbeat art doesn’t make you go bananas, I don’t know what will. Hansen’s works are just so detailed it’s hard to believe all he uses to create them is a common pushpin and the banana’s natural oxidation process. The talented artist just punctures the peel repeatedly with the pushpin and the banana, and as the the banana browns, his intricate designs are revealed. Phil Hansen is currently promoting his book, Tattoo a Banana: And Other Ways to Turn Anything and Everything into Art, due next month. In it, he explains how to create art from anything at hand – – like a piece of toast, your own fingerprints, or a stack of marshmallows – using offbeat techniques.

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Banana Oxidation Art Is Just Bananas

Australian artist Jun Gil Park has found a way of turning regular bananas into awe-inspiring works of art by drawing on them with a toothpick.

I’ve seen some pretty amazing banana artworks since I started Oddity Central, like the banana wall, or Jacob Dahlstrub’s banana boats, but Jun Gil Park’s oxidation art just makes me go bananas. Using a simple toothpick he scratches the designs into the banana, and the harder he presses/scratches, the darker the bruised part gets. It usually takes about five minutes for the oxidation to start showing, and after a day or two it gets really dark.

You’re probably wondering how Jun Gil Park came up with this simple-yet-impressive technique of turning bananas into organic works of art. It was pretty simple actually- he was just sitting at the table one day, talking to his family, holding a toothpick in his mouth, when he noticed a banana in front of him. He began scribbling on it as they talked and noticed what was happening to the banana. That’s when he decided he should try something more detailed next time.

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