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| Artist Vik Muniz in Waste Land. |
Heaps of art
By John Esther
A few years ago, one of the better selling living artists in the world, Vik Muniz, left his adopted home in Brooklyn, New York, to return to his home country of Brazil for his latest project. Rather than find inspiration in the metropolitan cities of Brasilia, São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro (like Orson Welles), Muniz went to Jardim Gramacho.
Located on the northern outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Jardim Gramacho is the world's largest garbage dump. Unlike the highly class conscious city of Rio De Janeiro where the extremely rich and the extremely poor are demonstrably demarcated by posh homes and pitiful favelas, Jardim Gramacho accepts all th(r)ash of life in the consumer culture age. It is located on the other side of Christ The Redeemer whose arms throw out blessings to the wealthy southern Rio de Janeiro residents from Corcovado Mountain. Behind the world's second largest art deco statue in the world (since we are talking art here) the arms of many flurry through the heaps of garbage for mere pittance.
Known as catadores, these poor people do not just go through trash looking for food for a rich person's discarded treasure (although there are some of those), they pick and separate recyclable materials.
When Muniz set out to paint the catadores he was expecting to find people beaten by the system, but what he found were many people with working class dignity. Women come here rather than prostitute themselves. Rather than enter the violent drug racket in Brazil, here men toil in trash in order provide for their large families. There are plenty of other things these people would rather be doing than picking through tons of waste (or a human body on occasion), yet they do see purpose in their occupation. As Brazil tears up the Amazon to the detriment of the world, these people are helping save the earth.
Because of what he found in these people who work the Jardim Gramacho, Muniz decided to recreate photographic images of the catadores out of garbage. The results are magnificent. Not only are the photos impressive works of art and meaning, they also transform everyone involved.
A real crowd pleasing documentary destined for Oscar nomination, Lucy Walker's Waste Land is a surprising joy about finding pride and purpose in one of the most unlikely places in the world.
Recommended.
(Waste Land screens Jan. 7, 9 a.m. Annenberg Auditorium; Jan. 10, 4 p.m. Annenberg Auditorium. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org)
