Shah Alam, who sells bananas for 35 cents each at a fruit stand on Manhattan's Upper East Side, was surprised to learn that one of his bananas was sold as part of a $5.2 million artwork by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, winning the auction for cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun.
At the fruit stand where he works on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Shah Alam sells dozens of bananas a day at 35 cents apiece, or four for $US1. He does a brisk business in cheap fruit outside Sotheby’s auction house; inside, art can sell for millions.
A fruit stand in front of Sotheby’s in Manhattan, where a banana that became part of a $US5.2 million piece of art was sold.A few days after the sale, as Alam stood in the rain on York Avenue and East 72nd Street, snapping bananas free of their bunches, he learned from a reporter what had become of the fruit: It had been duct-taped to a wall as part of a work by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, and sold to Justin Sun, the Chinese founder of a cryptocurrency platform.
Each edition sold in Miami for $US120,000 to $US150,000 and spurred unruly crowds: A performance artist at the exhibition ripped one off the wall, peeled the banana and ate it. Cattelan was delighted by the ensuing debate over what exactly constitutes art, and how it is valued.By last Wednesday, those questions of five years ago seemed quaint: Bidding for Lot No. 10 — Alam’s banana affixed to a wall with a slash of silver tape — started at $US800,000.
On social platform X, Sun crowed about his new art acquisition, and announced he now plans to eat it Friday. He was honoured, he wrote, to be the banana’s “proud owner”: “I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history.”A widower from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Alam was a civil servant before he moved to the United States in 2007 to be closer to one of his two children, a married daughter who lives on Long Island.
Banana Auction Art Maurizio Cattelan Shah Alam Cryptocurrency Sotheby’S
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