Waste Land Vik Muniz Analysis

Waste land is a movie that wants to reflect the importance of art in society. The words garbage, unusual art and hope could define the movie. Waste land shows life in Jardim Gramacho, Brazil. Recycling materials pickers, in Brazil known as catadores, are the subject matter of this documentary and Vik Muniz is the artist that transform their life and world’s perspective about “trash” collectors.

Vik Muniz is one the better Brazilian artist that was born into a middle-low class family in Sao Paulo. Muniz’s goal is to create catadores’ portrait in order to gain money for the catadores. Nevertheless, what he didn’t expect whit this art project is to transform the picker’s life, world’s perception about pickers, and his own perception. Muniz did not have a lot of material properties when he was a child so after becoming famous he needed to buy many different goods to remove that obsession. Nevertheless, after the movie ended he realized that material properties were not important any

After Muniz’s portraits are created, everybody seems feel more confident and better with themselves. Muniz’s art encourages the catadores to believe in themselves and the beauty and power that they have. A really good example is Tiao which is the president of ACAMJG (the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramacho), it is an organization that he created with another catadore friend after reading political text that he found in the dump, like Nietzsche’s political point of view. Even that not even his family believed in himself, he created the organization to help to improve catadores’ life. After doing his own portrait and selling it for a large amount of money, he felt like a rock start. He was very happy about what Vik made them achieve and he felt even more confident to transform the life of other people. At the end, he was even thinking about starting a presidential