The Fountain of Prosperity (Answers to Some Questions About Bananas)
Michael Stevenson
New Zealander, born 1964
2006
A freestanding kinetic sculpture made from Plexiglas, steel, brass, aluminum, rubber, cork, string, concrete, water, pumps and fluorescent lamps that cycles water through a complex array of transparent channels to suggest the mechanical and economic systems behind the banana trade.
Seen up close it reads like a cross‑sectioned machine—transparent chutes, rusted metal backing, small labeled elements and a hanging fluorescent light turn the work into a miniature industrial landscape where liquid paths and tiny mechanisms are revealed.
Stevenson turns commodity chains into a tangible, Rube Goldberg–like apparatus, making visible the ecological, colonial and industrial infrastructures of global trade and extending installation sculpture’s ability to expose political and economic systems.
Medium
Plexiglass, steel, brass, aluminium, rubber, cork, string, concrete, water, pumps and fluorescent lamps
Dimensions
96 7/16 × 61 13/16 × 43 11/16" (245 × 157 × 111 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of Gonzalo Parodi
Accession
686.2017
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
