Vik Muniz is a dope artist

Art is hard. It can be pretty and sometimes it can be important. Vik Muniz is an artist, and according to television shows in his native Brazil, one of the greatest alive. Constantly exploring different mediums, Muniz makes art out of everyday objects. He is appreciated in the art world and famous enough to take on whatever project he wants.

What he wanted to do in the documentary Waste Land, was hang out and make art at the world’s largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro, Jardim Gramacho. Muniz would make portraits of the pickers who live and work in the garbage. He would give all the proceeds from the sale of the work back to them. Genius.

Director Lucy Walker allows Muniz to explain his story and motivation for the landfill project through talking head interviews and discussions. Muniz seems honest and eager in his intention to combine art with social projects. His eye for composition and beauty is evident in his choice of subjects.

The pickers that Muniz hires as models and assistants become the heart of the film. Tiao is the young president and founder of the pickers association in Jardim Gramacho. He has been picking since he was eleven. He is eloquent and proud because he understands his vital role in the health of the city. He is quick to explain the difference between garbage and recyclable materials. A small army of his fellow pickers is responsible for extending the life of the landfill and for powering the recyclables economy. They work day and night.

Tiao is posed in the style of The Death of Marat, and shot in a bathtub with the landfill in the background. Muniz takes aerial photographs and becomes convinced that the art in the landfill is to be found in the human element.

He interviews and shoots other pickers and visits them at their homes. Suelem is 18 and lives in a disgusting $8 a week wood panel hut. She complains that rats bother her sleep as they scurry across her tin roof. She is shot in the style of a Madonna with her two young children at her side.

From the landfill to a rented studio the pickers collaborate with Muniz by strategically placing garbage around a projection of each portrait on the floor. Dirt becomes ink and found objects become paint. Bottle caps become freckles. Garbage becomes art.

There is a brilliant sequence where Muniz, his wife and his partner Fabio Ghivelder discuss the art project’s effects on the lives of the pickers. The pickers are happy as artists and don’t want to return to the landfill. Muniz handles the responsibility and the discussion beautifully.

My favorite scene was in London after Tiao’s portrait sells for $50,000 at auction. Muniz asks Tiao to explain how he became a work of art. Crying, Tiao says, “It was because years ago me and my partner started a pickers organization. Nobody believed in me. Nobody believed in me.”

That was the best. I love watching real people on their hustle doing real good honest things. Tiao is a guy who picks garbage but he does it with pride and he does it with heart. The garbage pickers in Waste Land are beautiful works of art. Vik Muniz is a dope artist for recognizing and immortalizing that beauty. I give this film an A+.