A South Korean art student recently admitted to eating a banana that was part of a renowned installation by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, explaining that he did it simply because he was “hungry”.

The incident took place at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, where the banana had been duct-taped to a wall. In a video that circulated online, Noh Huyn-soo can be seen peeling and eating the banana in front of a shocked audience, before reattaching the skin to the wall with the same tape and leaving with a satisfied smile on his face.

During the Miami Art Basel exhibition, the first and second editions of the artwork were sold for $120,000 (£95,640) each, and another was listed for $150,000. However, this was before Datuna arrived and consumed the fruit. “I have travelled to 67 countries in the last three years and have seen how people live,” Datuna explained.

“Millions of people are dying due to hunger. And yet he’s putting three bananas on the wall for half a million dollars?”