Vik Muniz

Vik Muniz is an influential contemporary Brazilian artist best known for his complex photographic works. Sourcing a wide variety of eclectic and found materials—chocolate, jelly, toys, and trash—Muniz recreates iconic art historical works and scenes from popular culture. By displaying the final piece as a photograph, he explores memory, perception, and the nature of images as represented in arts and communication. 

Vicente José de Oliveira Muniz was born in 1961 in São Paulo, Brazil. He starred in the documentary film Waste Land (2010) tracking the course of his project Pictures of Garbage (2008). The project included the recreation of Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Marat out of waste. This series of large-scale images was created with the help of catadores—the people who scour Rio’s sizable trash dump for recyclable materials. Muniz was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for his social activism, and the artist has had his work exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; and the Centre National de la Photographie, Paris. He currently lives and works between Brooklyn and Rio de Janeiro.

Work in the exhibition:

Vik Muniz, Diaspora Cloud, 2017. Nylon flag, dimensions variable. Presented as part of Creative Time’s Pledges of Allegiance, 2017 - 2018. Courtesy the artist and Creative Time, New York. Photo by Guillaume Ziccarelli.