Vik Muniz

Traditional concepts about art making and materials—that a sculpture is something cast or carved and a painting is done on an easel—gave way in the twentieth century to vast and varied explorations which knew no limits. This trend has continued into the twenty-first century, with an even greater emphasis on process. Vicente José de Oliveira Muniz, born in 1961 and known as “Vik,” articulated the significance of his approach in this way: “Process enters my work as a form of narrative. When people look at one of my pictures, I don’t want them to actually see something represented. I prefer for them to see how something gets to represent something else.” [1]

A Brazilian native, Muniz was born in São Paolo to a working class family; his father was a bartender and his mother a switchboard operator. The artist was very close to his grandmother, who taught him to recognize words at a very early age, but not to read phonetically. Later, when he went to school, he had trouble writing, so he turned to drawing as an expressive outlet. He took some art classes in Brazil before leaving for the United States in 1983. Initially a sculptor, Muniz has since gained worldwide recognition for his photographic images of mixed media renderings of art masterpieces such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper drawn with chocolate syrup, or Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera made out of garbage items.

The artist explains, “On principle, I don’t try to attract any attention to the mundane aspect of the materials I use. I just don’t discriminate. All materials are good for something in a picture, be it oil paint or elephant excrement. It’s interesting how people become amused by a shift in medium. If I draw somebody’s portrait with a pencil, it’s just a drawing and nothing else. But if I do the same drawing with molasses and have a trail of ants marching on it, all of a sudden it becomes miraculous. All media used by academic artists involves a color (pigment, dye, sometimes remains of mummified people) and a medium (milk, oil, egg, gelatin, saliva, anything transparent or viscous). Photography simply re-arranges the relationship between color and medium in a confusing way, a way that leaves to the viewer the task of finding out what he or she is looking at.” [2]

Muniz was the subject of a 2010 Academy Award-nominated documentary film, Waste Land, directed by Lucy Walker, which followed the artist as he worked on an art project with residents of Jardim Gramacho, one of the world’s largest landfills located outside Rio de Janeiro. Muniz is represented in many international public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; Centro Cultural Reina Sofia, Madrid; The J. Paul Getty Museum; Los Angeles County Museum; Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2013 he was located in New York.

Notes:

[1] Linda Benedict-Jones, “An Interview with Vik Muniz,” in conjunction with the exhibition Clayton Days. Picture Stories (Pittsburgh, PA: The Frick Art and Historical Center 2000). www.vikmuniz.net/bio

[2] Danilo Eccher, “Interview with Vik Muniz,” exhibition catalogue Vik Muniz (Rome: Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Art, 2003/ 2004). www.vikmuniz.net/bio