Leandra Espírito Santo (1983) is a visual artist, holding both a master’s and a PhD in Visual Arts from ECA-USP. Her practice unfolds through sculpture, installation, performance, video, and photography, articulating multiple media to investigate the effects of industrial processes on the formation of culture. By creating visual devices and experiments, the artist pushes the boundaries between the physical and the digital, the mechanical and the organic, opening up space for reflections on perception, communication, and the performativity of the body in the technological era.

She has participated in exhibitions and received awards in Brazil and abroad, in countries such as France, England, the United States, Mexico, and Portugal. In recent years, she has presented both solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as CCBB-SP (2025), MAC USP (SP, 2025), MAC Niterói (RJ, 2023), and the 13th Mercosur Biennial (Porto Alegre, 2022). Her main awards include the PROAC SP Visual Arts Historical Award (2020), the nomination for the PIPA Prize at MAM-RJ (2016), the award from the 42nd Luiz Sacilotto Contemporary Art Salon (Santo André), and the Secult Niterói Award (2014). Her works are part of the collections of Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP and Museu de Arte do Rio.

In Banana Fatiada (2024), from the series Natureza-morta (2011–2024), an everyday fruit is transformed into an object of contemplation. The banana, sliced and pierced by a skewer, appears suspended within a translucent resin block, illuminated by a metallic structure. The encapsulation procedure, also found in scientific practices, halts the natural process of decay, prolonging the fruit’s existence and displacing the still-life genre into a territory where art, science, and technology intertwine.

By fossilizing a perishable food—a symbol of Brazilian food culture—the work inscribes itself within the logic of a future archaeology, in which banal remnants of the present are projected as material records of an era. The lighting heightens this paradox, situating the piece between the atmosphere of a laboratory experiment and the allure of a display case. In this way, Banana Fatiada invites reflection on the boundaries between the natural and the artificial, vitality and death, permanence and ephemerality.