HONG KONG:
Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Friday fulfilled a promise he made after spending $6.2 million on an artwork featuring a banana duct-taped to a wall – by eating the fruit.
At one of Hong Kong’s priciest hotels, Sun chomped down on a banana in front of dozens of journalists and influencers after giving a speech hailing the work as “iconic” and drew parallels between conceptual art and cryptocurrency.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” Sun said after getting his first taste. “It’s really quite good.”
Titled Comedian, the conceptual work created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last week, with Sun among seven bidders. Sun said he felt “disbelief” in the first 10 seconds after he won the bid, before realising “this could become something big”.
In the 10 seconds after that, he decided he would eat the banana. “Eating it at a press conference can also become a part of the artwork’s history,” he said Friday.
The debut of the edible creation at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach sparked controversy and raised questions about whether it should be considered art – Cattelan’s stated aim.
And Sun on Friday compared conceptual art like Comedian to NFT art and decentralised blockchain technology. “Most of its objects and ideas exist as (intellectual property) and on the internet, as opposed to something physical,” he said.
Sun this week also became an advisor to World Liberty Financial, a crypto initiative backed by US president-elect Donald Trump, following a $30 million investment.
He earlier wrote on social media platform X that he was “excited to help make crypto great again in the US” with Trump’s leadership.
On Friday, Sun denied that the investment – which made him the largest investor in the project – was an attempt to influence Trump or American politics. “We are apolitical,” Sun told AFP in an interview. AFP
