The impressive works of Vik Muniz

These are just a few works by the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, which he designs with unusual materials, some of them salvaged from garbage. He uses dirt, sugar, chocolate, toy pieces, diamonds, press clippings, garbage and industrial waste to create impressive works. It makes us reflect on the power that he has the art to create illusions and the viewer’s interest in believing in them. Vik Muniz born in a humble home in São Paulo in 1961, learned to turn garbage into art. The Brazilian uses rusty cans, flat tires, empty soda bottles, discarded toilet seats and many other materials to build poetic and enigmatic images.“It’s not about producing something incredible, it’s about producing something you want to believe in”.Muniz spent three years in the world’s largest garbage dump, located in Rio de Janeiro, to create his series Images of Garbage (2008). There he met a group of people who survived by selling the recyclable materials they found in the garbage dump.He came up with the idea of ​​changing the lives of those people with the same materials with which they worked. He took photos of the recyclers in the middle of the dump and then reconstructed them using the objects they collected. He then photographed them, framed them, and put them up for sale. One of the recyclers was present at the auction where his image was sold for $50,000. Upon hearing the number, the humble young man could not contain his tears. The portrait, which revealed both the dignity and despair of his craft, would transform his life, as all proceeds went to him and his colleagues. A UN Goodwill Ambassador, Muniz believes that any material has the potential to become into art and transform the way people see the world: wire, thread, chocolate, sugar, earth, dust, caviar, diamonds, cotton, among others. His work is reflected in collections in New York, Washington, London, Tokyo, Madrid and Paris, among many others. Some materials are more difficult to handle than others. To work with sugar, as it happens with the earth, you have to be delicate and use small cups or damp cotton. Working with chocolate requires speed, since it dries very quickly and can only be handled in the course of an hour. But for Muniz it is not a problem to learn to use the material, as long as it allows him to communicate something and, above all, create an illusion.