Shown in Qatar in 2025 at the National Museum of Qatar as part of the exhibition “Latinoamericano: Modern and Contemporary Art from the MALBA and Eduardo F. Costantini Collections,” Banana Train activates a historical reading of commodity circulation and the making of imaginaries of labor, territory, and economy in Latin America. Starting from a scene linked to the “banana train”—infrastructure, cargo, bodies, and landscape—the work places in tension the promise of progress associated with modernization and the forms of exploitation and dependency that this very infrastructure sustained.

The painting sits at the intersection of visual memory and economic history: the train and its surroundings operate as a sign of a geography shaped by extractive interests and by narratives of development that leave persistent social traces. In this sense, the image offers a space for critical observation where the landscape is not a backdrop, but evidence.