Vik Muniz

‘The Scream’. An iconic, globally famous series of works produced in 1883–1910 by Norwegian expressionist Edward Munch. A natural subject for contemporary Brazilian artist Vik Muniz to tackle.
Muniz (born in 1961) recreates well–known works from art history in wildly differing materials. He uses everyday products such as peanut butter, chocolate sauce, sequins, sugar, pigments, tomato
sauce, diamonds and rubbish to reconstruct these art works. His extremely time–consuming and detailed work is then immortalized by the camera, creating beautiful photographs, often monumental
in size. His pictures play with our perceptions and he himself terms them ‘photographic delusions’. What the viewer first perceives as depictions of existing works of art prove on closer inspection to be innovative interpretations of subjects from our shared image
bank. Vik Muniz has produced versions of for example Gustave Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’, Andy Warhol’s ‘Electric Chair’, Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ and Jasper John’s ‘Flag’. Having drawn since childhood and worked with photography since the 1980s, the idea of what has now become his signature was born on a visit to the West Indian island of Saint Kitts as a young artist
in 1996. There he took polaroid photos of some families on a sugar plantation. The portraits highlighted the marked difference between
the radiant faces of the children and the crumpled bodies of the adults. Once he realised that the differences could be linked to the way sugar and the entire way of life working on the plantation breaks
people down, he realised that their portraits had to be created out of sugar. He used the glittering sugar crystals to make the portraits of the children on black paper and then photographed the result.
The pictures were selected by MoMa and shown there in the ‘New Photography’ exhibition in 1997, so kickstarting Muniz’ career as an internationally famous photographer.
Muniz currently has a major retrospective exhibition of more than 100 photographs at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Atlanta and a solo exhibition at the Xippas Gallery in Paris, where ‘Vik Muniz: 'Handmade’ is running from 8 September to 20 October. In the
past 2 decades Muniz has held several major exhibitions around the world every year. He is represented in the most prestigious collections including MOCA Los Angeles, the Paul Getty Museum,
Museu de Arte Moderna in Sao Paulo, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and MoMa NY.
In his homeland of Brazil, Vik Muniz is well–known and popular. He has launched and made donations to a number of social projects, mainly in Rio de Janeiro, which provide education and training for the city’s poorest and most vulnerable children. His documentary ‘Wasteland’ (2010) was nominated for an Academy Award and won The Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for best film. In 2011 he was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and in 2013 he received The Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum for his social work.