Sitting in a Starbucks wiping away tears as I watched the ending of the film Waste Land a documentary on Vik Muniz project Pictures of Garbage. The film takes place at the landfill that has the largest daily intake of garbage located just outside Rio de Janeiro in his home country of Brazil. It tells the story of Muniz going back to his place of birth and starts with him describing the beginnings of his artist journey to becoming the top selling Brazilian artist. He starts going to the landfill and creating friendships with those working there. He was surprised by the recycling pickers strong and beautiful mindsets of survival in such a tough and frowned upon form of employment. Muniz is there to create a work of art and then sell it at market and give all the money back to the community and people he works with at the landfill. Learning about the struggles of the pickers lives and hearing their goals and aspirations you as a viewer get connected to these people.
Through Muniz successful art career, he has come to the point where is is focused on a social practice process of creating. Where the works end goal is to make change within the topic being presented. It was beautiful experience to see the human connections he builds with the six pickers at the landfill location. One of the leading figures within the documentary was, Tião, a picker who was also the president of the pickers’ cooperative ACAMJG (the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramacho). Seven years later Tião is still a top leader with maintaining the rights of pickers. The photograph of Tião as Marat was made from recyclables from the landfill just like the other images. His photograph however was the only image to auction in London. He also went along for the journey and was there with Muniz when the work sold for $50,000. The documentary ended with all of the pickers that were represented within Vik Muniz’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro where many of the pickers saw the finished work in person for the first time. To hear them speak to the media about the experience as a whole was a special moment to watch.
Valentina, The Fastest, 13 3/8 x 10 1/2 in.
The process of creating the huge works of art was quiet the production. Created on the floor of a large warehouse space, Muniz would stand high above in order to direct where items went on the projection of the image on the floor. A few of the six pickers were studio assistants and helped bring the work to life. Muniz’s did this because he wanted the pickers to be able to say, “We did it. Not Vik did it.” The process was very specific in certain detailed parts. A strainer was used to sift specific amounts of dirt to shade the body. Bottle caps and other small items were used to create rigid lines. In areas with large amounts of a similar color an assortment of all different sized items were piled on to create the areas, such as in the bucket that Irma rested on her head.
The ability of Muniz to have you question what kind of material is being used to create his imagery is what makes me very interested in his work. His attention to materials and how it relates to the topic and people he is portraying within a variety of his works including his series Sugar Children. The kids within the images are the children of sugar cane workers in the Caribbean. He meticulously uses sugar on black paper to render the children’s faces. The work discusses the youth and their happiness that greatly differed from their parents states of happiness due to the long hours working in the fields.
Vik Muniz work pushes me to think about how to use materials and why I am using it to create a work in the first place. Also, about being a social practice artist and how as artists we have the ability to make change through creating visual representations of people, events, and concerns we have about anything really. Through looking into Muniz’s work, it has made me re-think about the possibilities of what ocean plastics can represent and how to use them in the best manner.