Vik Muniz
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1961, Vik Muniz currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has exhibited his works internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museu de Art Moderna, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil; Musée de l’Élisée Lausanne, Switzerland; and the Fondation Huis Marseille, Amsterdam. Muniz’s work is included in the collections of numerous museums including the Art Institute of Chicago; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museo de Arte Contemporanea, Prato, Italy; Museo de Arte Moderna de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2001, Muniz was the Brazilian representative at the 49th Venice Biennale.
Since the mid-1990s, Muniz has been incorporating everyday objects into his photographic process to create witty, bold, and often deceiving images based on photojournalism and art history. The Brazilian-born, New York-based artist makes pictures from dirt, diamonds, sugar, wire, string, chocolate syrup, peanut butter, dust, ketchup, the circular paper remnants made by hole punches, junk, pigment, and other materials. Though Muniz's images are often familiar—borrowing from popular culture and Old Master artists—it is quickly evident that they are not what they seem. Using an approach that the artist calls "the worst possible illusion," the works are formed from materials gathered from everyday life, which Muniz arranges and photographs, rather than traditional artistic materials.