Waste Land Review
By David Kempler
One Man's Garbage...
My mother always told me that modern art is garbage. Turns out that she might be right.
Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz now resides in the New York area. He is a modern artist who uses unusual substances in his work. They include caviar, sugar, string, wire, and, well, you get the idea. Whatever his eyes light upon may end up in his artwork. After he brings these unrelated materials together, he then photographs them.
While his materials might be found in a dumpster, his source for raw materials in "Waste Land" is far bigger than a dumpster. In fact, some might say that it's the Mt. Everest of trash, and they wouldn't be wrong. It's the Jardim Gramacho landfill, near Rio De Janeiro, and it is considered to be largest dump in the world in terms of volume of trash hauled to it every single day of the year.
For Muniz, what better place to look for garbage than in this enormous mound of smelly heaven? He heads there to see what he can come up with, but in his wildest dreams he could never have envisioned how it would all turn out. What he is most struck by is the "pickers" who make their living by wading through the trash piles. They are not as miserable as one might expect. Instead, they are a fairly happy and cohesive bunch and Muniz forms bonds with many of them.
In addition to making friends and creating art, he also unintentionally turns them into artists in their own right. By the time "Waste Land" takes its final form, you will not believe where the artwork of Muniz and his new buddies ends up. Some of the pickers lives are changed forever and it is difficult not to be moved by it all. From this stinking mass of rotting garbage, comes a very sweetly surprising aroma.
