In the 2010 documentary Waste Land, directors Lucy Walker, Joao Jardim and Karen Harley focuses on the modern artist Vik Muniz, whose works are created with the garbage and recyclables found in one of the biggest landfills in the world – Jardim Gramacho in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Muniz employed people to pick out material from the landfill that was recyclable for Muniz to make mosaics from. The film is an uplifting piece that focuses on the importance of art and conservation at the same time, while also demonstrating the strength of the human spirit in the lives and thoughts of the garbage pickers who suffer terrible working conditions to follow Muniz’s vision. The film also shows a tremendously haunting portrait of the effects of globalization on nature and conservation.
Vik Muniz’s tale as an artist is an interesting one; the plaque at the MoMA in the beginning notes that he uses everyday objects taken from “unlikely materials” to make his works, including “dirt, diamonds, sugar, wire, string, chocolate syrup, peanut butter, and pigment”. Often, his work involves recreating the works of other famous artists with this garbage; in the film, we see works by da Vinci, Goya, and others, all simulated and copied with this waste. This technique is incredible; the fact that he is not necessarily creating his own original artworks is the point – the paintings, just like their materials, are recycled. They are products just like the materials used to make them; people consume Saturn Devouring His Son or the Mona Lisa just as they do peanut butter, paint, dirt and other materials. He also creates his own artwork, to be sure, but the recreations in particular are very interesting. His “Sugar Children” are very important works, as the pictures of the Caribbean children made with sugar is meant to show how the “sweetness was taken from” them as they became impoverished adults.
This message in particular is shown in the working and living conditions of those Muniz works with – the garbage pickers who help him collect his materials. Rio de Janeiro is shown to be a place full of immense poverty and destitution; the favelas are huge, sprawling shacks where the poor live with few means. In the beginning of the documentary, Muniz makes his meaning plain; he wants to change the lives of these people. Here, he demonstrates what he feels is the importance of art – he uses art as a social project to improve conditions for those who are less fortunate. Art has the ability to take people away from their lives and put them in a different place, but he also wants to make a tangible change for them. By employing the people who live there, he wishes to both create art out of their situation and uplift them from that situation.
In the film, the garbage pickers Muniz hires are equated to garbage – not in terms of their quality as people, but as aspects of Brazilian society that, like garbage, are thrown away. They are all drug addicts, have very hard lives, etc., but Muniz wants to highlight that struggle and the classism that holds them down. Waste Land spends a lot of time focusing on the class struggles of Brazilians, as there is a huge wage and social disparity between these groups. While the rich are quite rich, the poor are dirt poor, forced to live a life of poverty and drugs. This is the result of a globalized economy, as economic development has led to greater business deals for the upper class while the lower class suffers. It is Muniz’s goal to highlight that class struggle through his art, and to make a change in the lives of the lower class through his employment of them.
The film also takes great pains to depict the nobility of the picker – many of the garbage pickers are shown to be quite proud of their profession, and their work with the ACAMJG, the Association of Pickers of Jardim Gramacho. Valter, in particular, is especially proud of his work, as he believes he is doing good for the environment by picking out the garbage and reducing the capacity of the landfill. His perspective is clear regarding the importance of conservation; he professes himself to be a strong advocate for teaching people about proper recycling practices. The other pickers also hold a strong sense of community, especially through the association – the president, Tiao, notes that the work of the pickers has brought paved roads and a sewage system to their part of Rio, thus improving conditions for themselves. It is this kind of work that Muniz wishes to highlight with his portraits of the pickers, as well as their undeniable humanity (as with Isis’s story of the married man she is in love with).
The treatment of art in the film does not extend simply to the portraits of the workers – even while in Rio they find ways to create and replicate art with the trash. In one scene, Tiao finds a bathtub while everyone is talking about philosophers, and they decide to recreate the image of David’s The Death of Marat, with Tiao over the bathtub, holding the infamous paper and pen as Vik takes the picture. Here, we see both the ubiquity of art and the dignity of the garbage pickers; these are not simple, uneducated people, but real human beings with a zeal for knowledge and education. The portrait itself also carries significant artistic meaning, as Tiao himself, like Marat acts as a martyr for the Association in his leadership, always being put at risk from gang warfare. The threat of violence is constant, though there is a lull in the fighting at the beginning of the documentary; the pickers note that the landfill is the perfect place for gangs to hide dead bodies.
All in all, the film demonstrates a significant sensitivity to the effects of industrialization and globalization on a developed nation. With a country so socially stratified as Brazil, the commercialism and materialism that leads to such rampant waste leads people to be forced into lives of scavenging, picking up trash in order to feed their families and also conserve the environment. Through Vik Muniz’s art project, the nobility and dignity of these garbage pickers is highlighted, as well as the importance of garbage as a part of us. By highlighting what we throw away by using the materials to create fine works of art, Muniz also demonstrates the need to recognize those who are also thrown away, and the consequences of our own waste.
Works Cited
Walker, Lucy, Jardim, Joao and Karen Harley. (dirs.) Waste Land. Documentary. 2010.
