Vik Muniz

Homework #5 (3) Research 1-2 artists (2 if you take this course for 3 credits) who work with documentation as an artistic process.
         
  I believe that all art is documentation, some art is documenting an experience, some is documenting a fantasy and others document the creative process all together. Someone who came to mind who not only documents stories in the form of art but also documents process is Vik Muniz, more specifically his work for the documentary “Waste Land” which I viewed recently.

            In the film Muniz the revered contemporary artist travels from his residence in New York to his country of origin, Brazil, to the Jardim Gramacho the largest garbage dump in the world. The Jardim Gramacho was located outside of Rio de Janeiro and received 7,000 tons of garbage daily making up 70% of the trash of Rio de Janeiro and surrounding areas and employed thousands of recycling and garbage pickers, catadores. Their jobs was to pick through the landfill in order to organize the trash into recyclables, glass, plastic etc, these catadores were part of the Associação dos Catadores do Aterro Metropolitano de Jardim Gramacho (Association of Collectors of the Metropolitan Landfill of Jardim Gramacho.) Muniz explored the Jardim interviewing various catadores in order to learn their story and how they came to the Jardim, and how the Jardim has impacted their lives documenting it all on film with his camera crew and director Lucy Walker. After getting to know them he began to focus on seven or eight catadores taking portraits of them documenting their plights and personality in the photographs. Once he narrows down the portraits he hired the selected catadores to help him create a large scale depiction of the photographs, almost like a collage, out of garbage from the landfill. Upon the completion of the large scale portraits Muniz photographed them and auctioned them off in London with the proceeds going towards the Associação dos Catadores do Aterro Metropolitano de Jardim Gramacho, with hopes that the raised money and publicity from the documentary would help benefit the lives of the catadores.

         Vik Muniz’s project and creative process was inspiring, it was incredible watching the project form from a concept into the final photographs. It was interesting seeing how Muniz thought so outside the box, he managed to combine his skills in sculpture using found objects, photography, documentation and philanthropy in order to benefit a community of people so close to his heart. His final projects viewed from the raised platform overlooking the studio space was spectacular, it was so interesting seeing how the garbage looked close up in comparison to viewing it from up above, or in photographs. I personally loved the simplicity of a majority of the images, how even though the media used to create it was far from simple, the final product emanated minimalism. Not only did his artworks document the story and plight of the cat adores, the film documented his entire creative process. The final artworks were beautiful but the most beautiful aspect of the art was the fact that through the construction of the works the lives of the participating catadores were changed for the better and the whole process was documented for the world to see.