This Brazilian artist creates amazing works of art with trash

Just as Antonio Berni, in Argentina, created Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel, two poor children from the big cities of Latin America who represent all the children who live in situations of poverty, this Brazilian artist named Virk Muniz has also created works of incredible art using waste materials as raw material.

Born into a humble home in São Paulo in 1961, Vik Muniza learned to turn trash into art. In his works, he uses rusty cans, flat tires, empty soda bottles, discarded toilet seats, and many other materials to construct poetic and enigmatic images.

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 dump.

And it was there that it occurred to him to change 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 trade, would transform his life, as all proceeds went to him and his companions.

Named a UN Goodwill Ambassador, Muniz believes that any material has the potential to become art and transform the way people see the world: wire, thread, chocolate, sugar, dirt, dust, caviar, cotton, among others. 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.