A Response to Vic Muniz's "Wasteland"

In watching Vic Muniz’s Wasteland, I immediately connected with his goal to change the lives of people by using items used by said people everyday in an unconventional manner, in this case, using recyclable items thrown away as trash to create stunning, large-scale portraits that are then photographed from above. To see a now successful artist from a desperately low-income background go back to his homeland to interact with men and women who are participating in what is thought by many to be a filthy and thankless job, is a bold statement by the artist in that Muniz wanted to shed light on the job of a picker and change the way in which the world sees them.

Muniz’s concept of “Can art change people?” I think is one of the major points of this project/exhibition because it concerns not only the way in which we observe people, but also the world around us and the parts of it we experience every day. In his process of photographing the landfill, Muniz comments on how from above, the site loses the human factor – people instead appear as insects going about their daily habits. I believe this idea of distance is important to note because the distance between the photographer and the subject in this particular instance reflects the distance in the relationship we each have with materials we think we are familiar with.

The power of Muniz’s work lies in the relationships that are formed in learning about the lifestyle of the pickers and the process of these men and women working with Muniz to produce art that centers on them. This transformation of trash/recyclables to art takes place not only in the materials, but also within the people. These men and women who are seen by many as filthy as the trash they work with discover a new sense of self-worth and are drastically changed by this interaction with Muniz and his work.