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Vik Muniz — The Art of Perception (EP.294)

Infinite Loops

Wed Dec 17 2025

Summary

Infinite Loops with Jim O’Shaughnessy

Episode 294: Vik Muniz — The Art of Perception

Release Date: December 17, 2025

Brief Overview

This episode features a vibrant, deeply philosophical, and at times very funny conversation between host Jim O’Shaughnessy and renowned artist Vik Muniz. They explore art as a tool of perception, representation, and transformation—not just of materials, but of the people who encounter and create art. Muniz traces his journey from a favela in Brazil to international acclaim, reflecting on how art shapes how we think, feel, and organize society. The discussion weaves together Muniz’s personal history, creative process, the societal role of art, concepts of belief and value, humor, and the necessity of retaining childlike wonder.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Muniz’s Origin Story: Childhood, Learning & Early Art

[01:45–07:36]

Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Muniz describes a modest upbringing, raised mostly by his resourceful grandmother who taught herself and him to read from the Encyclopedia Britannica (“She knew every capital...every bone in the human body...although she never been to school a single day of her life.” [03:00]).
Muniz is dyslexic and learned to read early but couldn’t write for years, so he developed a visual “shorthand,” drawing pictures to represent words—forming the root of his artistry.
A state art competition at 14 sparked his passion, bringing him into contact with other “kids like me” and resulting in two years of academic drawing classes at a private school.
Early interests in psychology, perception, and experimental theater, shaped by growing up during Brazil’s military dictatorship, cultivated his skepticism and deep interest in representation.

2. Serendipity, Trauma and Art as Rebirth

[14:45–17:41]

Muniz shares a dramatic story: while accepting a young talent award, he intervened in a fight, was mistakenly shot, and nearly died—an event that, via the subsequent insurance settlement, bought him a ticket to the U.S. in 1982.

“This is the reason we’re having this conversation is because I got shot. You know, this is how lucky I am.” —Vik Muniz [17:36]

3. The Dance of Representation: Art and Audience

[00:00–00:34; 18:49–23:43]

Muniz insists that the viewer is half the equation in art, and the act of seeing/participating is what enlivens a work.
He repeatedly references the magic of early human representation—such as Paleolithic cave paintings—and the profound ability of art to preserve and transmit experience across time.

“The artwork starts happening when there’s somebody in front of it and you realize what you see is something that the person can be seen as well. And how do you have this dance with the audience when you’re dealing with representation?” —Vik Muniz [00:14 & 18:49]

4. The Evolution of Representation & Technology

[23:28–26:59]

The invention of photography liberated painting “from its duty to portray the world as it was.”
Today, digital imagery has complicated and at times severed the connection between image and reality, challenging our discernment.

“The image no longer tells you that something happens… it has become an autonomous entity.” —Vik Muniz [29:11]
The “race between technology and skepticism” is ongoing: the challenge for artists is to foster discernment and critical engagement.

5. Art, Belief, and Intelligence

[25:24–26:21]

Muniz distinguishes human intelligence by our capacity for belief, not just thought or reaction.

6. Accessibility, Art, and Social Class

[32:45–38:41]

Muniz describes his school in Brazil, opened so “I don’t have to keep having kids,” as a laboratory for creative education and democratizing art.
He intentionally uses humble, everyday materials (sugar, spaghetti, chocolate, junk) to break down barriers: “Things that don’t inspire the idea of mastery... I try to make it approachable.”
He cautions against art that begins with good intentions; curiosity and sincerity make good art, which can then become political.

7. Political Power & Art: “Wasteland” and Beyond

[44:53–56:33]

The film “Wasteland” documents Muniz’s project at Jardim Gramacho (the world's largest garbage dump) in Brazil, where he collaborated with local recyclers (“catadores”) to create portraits from discarded materials.
The project transformed not just objects, but perception and the lives of participants:

“The greatest achievement of the film was it changed the perception of the entire Brazilian population about who these people are, you know, … it allowed them to organize better.” —Vik Muniz [54:35]
Muniz stresses the need for capital exchange—art benefiting the subjects directly, not just illustrating social issues.

8. The Subjective Value of Art and Authorship

[67:28–70:32]

The value of art is often artificially constructed—signature, authorship, notoriety—rather than inherent to the object or image.
They discuss forgery, taste, digital algorithms, and how the era of “quantitative value” has replaced the interpretive role of criticism and movements.

9. Humor, Ambiguity, and the Child’s Mind

[78:39–83:32]

Humor and visual illusion both rely on subversion, surprise, and ambiguity; they require keen intelligence and foster participation.

“I’ve never met a funny person who wasn’t intelligent.” —Vik Muniz [83:12]
Art should foster a sense of possibility and play—a thread that Muniz connects to a child’s outlook.

10. Theater, Participation, and the Magic of Not-Knowing

[86:26–92:30]

Muniz contrasts the experience of high art vs. amateur theater, noting how ambiguity and imperfection force deeper audience participation.

“If you see something that is complete...the viewer will look at it, will think of how good the artist is. I’m not interested in that... I am good at creating connections.” —Vik Muniz [86:41]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the nature of intelligence and belief:

“Intelligence, for me, is the ability of any organism, no matter how small or simple, to feel and react...We are different because we do not think, we believe.” —Vik Muniz [24:40]
On the viewer's role:

“The most important thing is actually to create something that is left to the viewer to complete.” —Vik Muniz [74:52]
On growing up and education:

“You are only a child once, but that can last a lifetime.” —Vik Muniz [93:32]
On humor as survival and subversion:

“Humor is a strategy...ambiguity is something that you have to inject in the work in order for the image to be interesting.” —Vik Muniz [78:39]
“I’ve never met a funny person who wasn’t intelligent.” —Vik Muniz [83:12]
On social and political impact:

“If I am, what I do is political in the fact that [it] helps people see things or ask questions about what they’re looking at…” —Vik Muniz [34:22]
On the transformative power of art:

“It’s something that reflects. It’s more than you. I don’t think I want that much control over what I do anymore.” —Vik Muniz [52:16]

Timestamps for Significant Segments

[01:45] — Muniz’s formative years: family, dyslexia, and the role of his grandmother
[14:45] — Story of being shot and its transformative impact
[17:41] — Art as audience participation
[18:49] — The Paleolithic “magic” of representation
[23:28] — Invention of photography and the liberation of painting
[29:11] — The image as autonomous, belief, and discernment
[32:45] — On democratizing art education in Brazil, class, and accessibility
[44:53] — “Wasteland” documentary and working with catadores in Brazil
[52:16] — On relinquishing authorship and collaborative creation
[54:35] — Broader social impact of the “Wasteland” project
[67:28] — Value of art, forgeries, and the digital era’s quantitative taste
[78:39] — Humor, ambiguity, and intelligence in art and life
[86:26] — Ambiguity in theater and participatory magic in art
[93:32] — Muniz’s “Emperor of the World” message: retain your inner child

Closing Reflections

Host’s Closing:
Jim O’Shaughnessy celebrates Muniz’s capacity to invite childlike wonder, humor, and participatory imagination in every encounter with his art, reinforcing the need to resist the narrowing of curiosity and playfulness as we grow older.

Muniz’s “Two Things for the World” If Emperor:

“You are only a child once, but that can last a lifetime.” [93:32]
(Borrowed from Mark Twain via Muniz): “Never let school interfere with your education.” [94:35]

Overall Tone

Warm, playful, philosophical, and deeply human. Both Muniz and O’Shaughnessy combine intellectual rigor with lighthearted humor, resulting in an episode that is sharp yet inviting—encouraging listeners to see (and make) the world anew.

Recommended: For anyone interested in art, creativity, psychology, education, or how to keep their “HumanOS” open to possibility and wonder.

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Transcript

Vic Muniz (0:00)

I think representation is the greatest invention after the control of fire allowed us to actually extend our experience beyond the reach of our senses. We take that for granted. The artwork starts happening when there's somebody in front of it and you realize what you're seeing is something that the person can be seen as well. And how do you have this dance with the audience when you're dealing with representation? This is probably the most interesting part.

Podcast Host (0:34)

I just had the most wonderful conversation with my guest this week, Vic Muniz. He is possibly one of the most creative artists working today. Vic's art is widely collected in museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Whitney, and many, many international museums as well. Please enjoy my conversation with Vic Muniz. Vic, it is so great to have here. I am one of your biggest fans. I'll get that out of the way. We've been collecting your work for a long time. Most of it is at our house in Connecticut, but this one, we had a fight for that one. Well, because when we went to buy it, the gallerist came over and said, somebody a little more important than you is interested in this. And I'm like crushed. Right, because we just loved this piece and we ended up getting it, obviously. But let's start with your background. For people who might not know, tell us your superhero backstory.

Vic Muniz (1:45)

Well, there's not. Well, it's a long story though. That's a long life. Thanks God. I was born in Brazil, in Sao Paulo, the largest city in the southern hemisphere. And my father was a waiter. He worked as a waiter. He died this year and he worked as a waiter his entire life. My mother was a switchboard operator at the local phone company. And we lived in the outskirts of the city in a pretty much like a little bit more organized Islam area, you know. So I was born in the favela, basically. And then my father came from. Is an immigrant from northeastern Brazil. Very poor area at the time. And growing up I didn't really have my father. Neither parent had much of an education. You know, they had a. They didn't complete even like they didn't go to high school. But I was very fortunate to be raised by my grandmother, who also never had a single day in school. But she learned how to read just by looking at her kids books. Nobody knows how she did it. And I'm mentioning this because it has a lot to do with my becoming an artist as well. My grandmother is probably the most intelligent woman I've ever met. I remember the day my father brought the only Books that we had at home was a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. He brought it on a wheelbarrow. He had won this on a pool game. And my grandmother and I, we spent days and days and all our afternoons looking at those pictures and reading the way she taught me how to read on an encyclopedia. And she read encyclopedia from A to Z several times because those the only things there was to read. She knew every capital, you know, if you ask her, you know, what's the capital of Malta, she'd go Valletta, Liechtenstein, like this. And she was. Or every bone in the human body. Although she never been to school a single day of her life. But she taught me how to read. The way she taught herself how to read is by memorizing the shape of the words. So I am a self taught dyslexic person so much that when I started going to school I could not write because I had to relearn how to read and write. And it was very complicated for me to do those things. And I was reading already chapter books. But I could not write a word on my own until the third year of school. In that period, I think is something very. Because I had kids. When you start learning about or actually having a different picture of the world through symbolic exchange, you know, so you start learning more words, you know, you broaden your vocabulary and then you have things that stand between you and the world. So they start this edifice of little symbols, you know, I think it's a very important, perhaps the most important part of your formation as an individual when you start creating the tools that will. May help you interface with the real world. Until then, your relationship is very direct. So I started. I could not write and I started drawing at that time. So I had the kind of like a shorthand that I developed, you know, that I would. If I would do dictation, if I didn't know a word, I would just make a short drawing like, you know, secretaries used to do in the past. And then. And my copy books look like the Egyptian section of the Net. So it's just. But I could read those things. And all of a sudden they started getting a little bit more refined. And eventually I learned how to read and write like everybody else. But I had a different relationship which is very. They were kind of ideograms. And those things developed. After some years they developed into more elaborate drawings. And by the time I was like 8 or 9, I was the kid that did the caricatures of the teachers and knew how to do perspective and I could draw things from nature, do pictures of the girls I liked and things like that. So my identity as somebody who dealt with representation drawing became who I was. And I was the guy who made drawings. And by the time I was 14, I was enrolled in. I represented my school in a. For it was a public school, obviously. And then I represent the school in a statewide. A bit of a contest, you know, art contest. You know, it happened exactly where the Sao Paulo Biennial actually happens in the Birapuera. For the first time in my life, I realized there were kids like me. I was a bit of a loner. I remembered that day. And I did things that were three dimensional. Kind of like that perspective and collage. Not very different than the things I do today. It's very strange when I remember. I think I've been doing this all my life. I thought that was the prize. And I won first prize. And it was two years of academic drawing training at school. A private school called. It's called Panamericana. So I would go there in the afternoons. So when I was 14, I was drawing naked people. And I never missed a class. The first naked person I saw in my life was during life drawing class.

Vic Muniz (7:39)

Yeah, it was really exciting by the time then you get used to it. And I think there was also a moment. It's like weight loss. You make a lot of progress. And then it gets incrementally less as you drawing is the same. By the time you develop more and more technique. Your development becomes less and less visible. So I started becoming intrigued. Not about the fact that. About the drawings themselves, the technique of drawing, the ability to make reproduction. But I think I had to fulfill that lack of improvement, you know, with understanding and discernment about what a drawing really was. So I started thinking about representation in a deep, deeper, more wider sense. How do we see things in pictures? You know, when did it start? How did that develop? So when I went back to Paleolithic art. And started understanding how do we develop perspective and art history became something that fascinated me. And also psychology at the time in Brazil was during the military dictatorship. And it was interesting to assume the identity of an intellectual at that time. And I was into experimental theater. And the last generation of. The last generation of teenagers that lived through the dictatorship. But I wasn't a victim of the dictatorship, direct victim. I wasn't tortured or anything like that. But my understanding of society was a little bit shaped by that kind of environment. Which was a moment where you cannot Say what you think the way you want to say it. And all the information that comes to you comes from very biased sources. So you have to be very skeptical, get very cynical about the way you receive information. It's a bit of a semiotic black market. You just have to negotiate everything. I think that along with this interest that I had in representation makes up for what I do I've done all my life. You know, I tried to. Had a deep interest in psychology too. Liked science a lot. And for a moment I started reading these books by experimental psychologist names James, named James Jerome Gibson. He wrote several books on perception. You know, some of they had very rudimentary translations in Portuguese. At the time there was not that many books available. But I remember started reading about this and he was hired by the Air Force in the moment they were developing jets in the 50s to understand how the eye perceives depth or perspective. It was like they had to understand perception in a challenging environment. In order to improve its interface for the equipment and everything else. He had so many interesting ideas about how the way we move, there's not actually space, there is ambience is what we deal. Because as we move and everything moves with us. This consciousness of the visual space that was. It opened a huge set of ways of looking at things for me. And I thought maybe this is what I would like to do. I would like to be a psychologist, like an experimental psychology and work in the field of vision. And I tried for the vestibula, which is the exam for the private schools twice. But it was a very broad test and I wasn't very good at math and other things. So I failed twice. And I settled for a half scholarship in advertising communication studies. But with the major in advertising, which I did go for six months because I realized that my father was taking a second job in order to pay for expenses. Our grandparents lived with us. So I said I cannot afford that. I have to help at home. And I remember then that I was. Something really interesting happened. I could not read the billboards around the town. You know, I had an extreme. It was very hard for me to read the billboards. And I thought it was some kind of like it had to do with this self taught dyslexia, you know. But then I realized that nobody could read them. I drove my mom once to go to the bank and can you read that? She said no. What about if I go 20km an hour? Can you read that now? No, what about 10? Started making notes. And at the end of a couple of months I had Developed a chart that crossed the vectors of speed, angle of approach, and the number of size of text. And I went to one of the. There were two companies that did point of sale advertisement in Brazil. One was called Alvo Target. You know, and then I went to this guy and I said, listen, your. Your ads, your signs, outdoor billboards really suck. I mean, they're awful. You know, you have all these billboards on the side of the jockey, the. The. The. The horse racetrack, you know, and they're on the wall, and you have to be a person who can read three lines of text at 90 or to 100 kilometers an hour backwards to be able to buy what you're selling. You just have to change their position. I've done this. Look, I developed this chart, and I can help you do this. If you don't hire me, I'll go to your competitor. Well, he hired me. Very little pay. I was driving around with my Volkswagen bittle making notations. And then I worked for the. He gave me gas and some money, but it was enough for me to help at home. And I dropped out of school that year. At the end of that year, this chart that I wrote got published in an advertising magazine. Around the beginning of the following year, I was given a prize for young talent. So it was the day I went to pick up this prize. I rented the tuxedo, and it was a Plexiglas thingy. I never saw it again because I have to tell you what happened. I went to this thing, picked up this thing, and then on my way out, somebody, a woman, stopped my car, and she said, you have to help me out. They're killing my fiance. And then I looked, and in fact, there was a person. They're all dressed. They were all in the party. They were dressed with bow ties and tuxedos. And this guy was hitting the other guy with brass knuckles against the car. And I got out of my car, left the car in the middle of the road, ran, and I pulled the guy, the aggressor, and this guy ran away. And I hear people horns because I had left my car in the middle of the road. And I said, I'm going to park my car, and then I'll see what happened. Help this guy. On my way to my car, I hear an explosion. And then I'm on the floor, and I said, what happened? And then when I turned, the guy who I had just saved thought that I was his aggressor because everybody was wearing a tuxedo. You know, this looks like a James Bond Film and he grabbed a gun in the car and started shooting at me. So he hit me. And I just saw him shooting again and again and again. And I saw the bullets. I mean, I tell people that nobody believed when I saw the Matrix, you know, the bullets come like, yeah, I've seen that. You know, I was so. And then I somehow made it to my car and drove to the next, near the nearest hospital. And I even hit the car on a corner, and I don't remember anything anymore. Three days later, I wake up. The first thing I see is the guy who had shot me apologizing. He was full of bandages on his face. I thought I had died and go to. Gone to mummy heaven, you know, and then. Or mummy hell. And then I. This guy said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I had dislocated my jaw. I couldn't speak, so I was like. Couldn't even say, it's fine, you know. But so luckily he hit my leg, like half inch, half centimeter from my femoral vein. Although I wouldn't be telling the story here. And luckily also, he was rich, this guy who shot me. And then he paid for all the medical expenses and agreed to pay a sum of money that would help me go through a year without being able to work because I just. I couldn't walk, you know, with this money, I bought a ticket and I came to the United States in 19, in. In 82. So this is the reason we're having this conversation is because I got shot. You know, this is how lucky I am.

Vic Muniz (18:49)

I don't know. I think I am, as I mentioned before, I discovered books very early, and I was not ever good in sports or anything like that. I was always a little bit of a loner. And as a loner, you get sick of yourself, and you discover pleasure in interaction, in conversation. And that, I think, has shaped a little bit my relationship to the public. I think you only do half of it. The artwork starts happening when there's somebody in front of it. And you realize what you see is something that the person can be seen as well. And how do you have this dance with the audience when you're dealing with representation? This is probably the most interesting part. If you think that, you know, maybe 50,000 years ago, a guy walks into a cave, you know, and he sees in the cracks of the cave something that's shape that he seems to have seen it before. But it's not just a shape. It's a shape that, like, shapes like an animal. Not like. Not any animal. It's a bison, okay? And not any bison. He's the bison that he had hunted when everybody was hungry in his tribesmen. And then he remembers the hunt. He remembers the rush, you know, the adrenaline and the taste of the meat of the animal. And all of a sudden, he looks at that again. There's just some cracks on the wall. And then he picks up some kind of, you know, a little rock, and then he draws the missing eye, a little horn, a tail. And all of a sudden, all those memories come back. This is really interesting. But the most interesting part is when he brings his tribesmen, his fellow tribesmen, and shows it to them, and all of them see the same thing. And this is how magic it is. And he can bring the past into the present, and that hunt will be forever there, and future generations will be able to get access to that. So it transcends time and transcends space. I think representation is the greatest invention after the control of fire because allowed us to actually extend our experience beyond the reach of our senses. We take that for granted. I always do this. I have a school in Brazil, and sometimes I go there with the kids in the favela in Vizigao, near my house. And then you go, like. You just do like this. You know, what do you see when you do this? Just as a gesture. And people say, the sun. And I said, the sun is a ball of fire, you know, eight light minutes from here. You know, it's like it is. And you can bring it into this room just with a gesture. This is magic. And we forgot how magic it is. And because we are spoiled with easier or easy to digest forms of representation, we forgot this ritual, the power of this ritual. Of tools that we've created and how they have actually shaped our way of seeing things. I think it's the. There were moments, you know, in our history that we have an evolutionary relationship to the ambient, to the environment, to the visual environment, you know, but there are some revolutionary moments. You know, like I say, industrial revolution, probably in the invention of. Brought the invention of photography and serial production of images made the whole world different. And the relationship with people, to the world was so traumatic that it took two world wars for people to start learning how to deal with this new world again right now. And around that time of the industrial revolution, you have a complete shift in the way representation actually had to evolve and artists had to evolve with it. In 1839, when photography was invented, the next, all the newspapers celebrated the death of painting. And we can buy paint even easier today than we could then. And actually photography liberated painting from its duty to portray the world as it was.

Vic Muniz (26:59)

The fact that the. The person who made the bison, you know, it stood there, it. Everybody was amazed. And then two weeks later, another guy went there, and they say, it's missing a little color here. It's missing some shadow because it's floating in the middle. And it improved a little bit, you know, and then everybody go, oh. And then they got tired of it and somebody else did something else. And then the. The whole development of our relationship with the world through imagery has been this race between technology and skepticism. So it's always going a little bit. And that race has actually allowed us to know the weather that's coming and knowing things that are going to happen. It's interesting also to notice that the whole deal of art happens in the realm of the inconsequential, you know, is that we. Because we deal with possibilities, not real facts. You know, the fact that. But these are important because we shape futures. We shape. Or we actually shape the past, too, you know, as we. We know more and more. But the thing is, art not only say art, because art for me is a very broad term, but also representation is a set of tools that allowed us to actually see the world and understand the world beyond the reach of our senses. But it was always in the service of feeling and reacting, of intelligence. It allows us to know that there is a city called Tokyo, that I was there yesterday, you know, and that I can go there. And that allowed me to think that there was a guy named Napoleon Bonaparte and allowed us to think about it broadened. But it was all based on fact, some kind of evidence. Right? Right. What happens right now is that the image no longer tells you that something happens, you know, and then it has become an autonomous entity. It does not serve the process of feeling and reacting any longer. And it's actually. It is still the ground in which we're walking and feeling the world around us. So it's very dangerous proposition that you have something that is made to be believed, but it no longer serves its purpose. What's the alternative is to think is to actually create discernment. I find that we managed to do this before. To learn how to live in this new environment. And I don't think this is any different. I think we're just going to artists, creative people are going to start having to create understanding and discernment. But this is not going back to your question. This is not something you can do alone. Right. The artist has to have participation. And then I find it in the fine arts, you know, this the name fine arts already. It's a kind of. I find it very old, like 19th century. Yeah, I kind of like it, you know, fine art. I'm a fine artist. It's the only fine thing I am. I find it. It's very elitist. It's a privile, you know, and when it should be a right, almost a duty, you know, for people to be engaged into thinking about the way they deal with the world through the representation, the way the world is presented to symbols. You know, this should be taught at schools in a way that is not totally agree. I've been working with that. Developing, you know, programs that deal with. Even the help kids, you know, deal with technology, the technology of images.

Vic Muniz (32:48)

I think it's a fatherly thing, I guess, but to the point that I had to open a school. And I said, in Malu, My wife said to me, are you sure you want to do this? I said, listen, is it a debt or you're going to have to keep having kids? So we have four. So I said, I think I'm going to make a school. And then the school has become a very fertile ground for experimentation and for discussion. And it's quite wonderful because you're dealing with kids that very much like me, they live in an urban area where they're exposed to desire, to media, to a lot of the mediatic environments. Very, you know, it permeates every section of Brazilian society. People are very good with, you know, with the digital era. They really. Everybody has a cell phone, no matter where they live. They're very. And they're very good at it, you know, posting and sharing and these kids. But they don't have the means to actually acquire things, you know, and when you. So they're very similar to what I was when I was a kid. You know, I was exposed to ideas, but I wasn't, you know, exposed to goods, you know, to real things. It's fascinating to deal with image savvy kids that really represent probably the largest number of individuals in the world. The world is poor, you know, there's some people fail to also realize that. And we're very, very privileged people and have to be aware of our privilege and we'll have to do something with it. And I always go back to where I come from all the time. And especially when we're talking about accessibility to art. Is this something. I think I don't raise too many political flags in my work. I think it's a dangerous thing because I'm very wary of art that starts with good intentions. You know, I think good. Good intentions don't make. Necessarily make good art. I think curiosity and, and. And sincerity and. And investment, intellectual investment makes good art. And that art may become political as a result of how close you are to what you're trying to portray. It becomes A tool too. I think if I am, what I do is political in the fact that helps people see things or ask questions about what they're looking at, you know, which I think being a sort of a product of a society where this was not allowed, I think I valued that a lot. But also I think, you know, I'm very conscious of the fact that the first time my parents saw, stepped into a gallery or a museum was to see an exhibition that I did. They wouldn't venture into a space like it was very hostile, very exclusive, very, you know, it was not something that they would go to. And it's a pity because contemporary art, it has the power to unsettle, you know, the status quo. It makes you. Put you in a different kind of way of looking at things. And that is a healthy thing. It's like exercising your relationship to what you think, you know. Totally agree.

Vic Muniz (38:41)

I think I get bored very quickly. Maybe that's the reason I work with different things. But. The idea of access, it's very important because I deliberately chose to work with simple materials. Things that people don't. They don't. Not part of a hierarchical. Things that don't inspire the idea of mastery. If you make something out of spaghetti, it's not like oil paste. That immediately creates a difference between. Between the artists. And so I try to make it approachable and try to make it common. When you think about the political influence of an artwork, you know, I feel that it's very pretentious almost. I don't. I don't think I can. I want to communicate with society as if society was a thing. Right. I don't believe that. So I think you're becoming older, you're becoming aware of the scope of your influence. And I think I can affect individuals better than I can affect a group of people, you know, And I think if you are effective, at least you're not going to change people. But, you know, you're on this line here. Oh, you want to do like a little, you know, a nudge a little. Yeah, so you go to that side. But if you can do that, that is, for me, my work is already done. In order to do that, you know, I have to be close to things that I involved, personally involved, and I try to be involved with. You know, I work, as Corey says, I love toy stores. You know, I love. I like to read and I like to. For instance, one thing like the piece that you described, the birthday party. I remember when I arrived in this country, I lived in Chicago, in the suburbs of Chicago for like a few months, you know, because I was initially, the idea was to learn English and then go back to Brazil. And I did something, you know, I did a mistake. I came to New York on the 4th of July, and I became infatuated with the city. And I said, I want to live here. So that. That. And it was a weekend before I was about to go back. And the weekend now is like 40 years, less than 40 years. And I remember, you know, when I was in Chicago, it's a northern suburb of Chicago, Northbrook. And when I was a kid, my mother's sister worked in the airlines, so she lived in between Miami and she worked as a stewardess. And she come to visit us every year, and she has a camera, so she takes a picture every year of me. And then she goes back and it takes me a year to see the picture. Now, when I told that to my daughter. She was like, why didn't she show you on the phone? No, no, no, it wasn't like that. So I had to explain it to her how it was. She was so sorry for me. But I. As a result, I had only nine or ten pictures of me as a child. When I saw on a garage sale, photographs being sold, I didn't understand how could those pictures become separated from the people they portrayed. They're like orphans, you know? Yeah. And I had no. Had very little money then, but I bought them, you know, I kept buying them. So for 40 years, I've been buying family pictures. And then I have to say, I never had a class. And I taught photography at Bard College, but I never had one class on the subject in my entire life. But everything I learned about photography, I learned from looking at family pictures. And it became more than a hobby because every picture is fascinating there. If you get, like, now I have like 250,000 photographs of people that I never met, people who are not here anymore. And you look at it, every single one of them is a moment that somebody thought it was important and it's beautiful, you know, and then these things are in boxes. I said, I have to do something. So I started making collages with them and bringing them back to life and to. Back to people's awareness, you know, but there was. I mean, there was so many amazing things from looking at especially bad pictures. You know, there's a. There's a one that's very funny. It's like the picture of the Eiffel Tower. You know, people go to Paris and they say, I want to take a picture with the Eiffel Tower. So. But there's a problem of scale. You know, there's. There's a discrepancy because the Eiffel Tower is a huge monument and the person is a small thing. So you try to make a picture. They go to the Eiffel Tower to take a picture with the Eiffel Tower. So they could never do it. So there's a little head and then the thing. There's like pictures of people with camels. Camels are very big, you know, but people don't realize until they are, because they're either. So if you get the whole camel, you don't know who it is. So it becomes a completely nonsense. But if you get the purse, you lose the camel.

Vic Muniz (47:40)

So it's. I love anything that's in between, you know. I'm very interested in grays, you know, so I. These gray areas are very good. So I thought I had tried before to do this a few years before, but they were the place that I had to work with. Garbage was controlled by the narco traffic in Brazil. So they used to put weapons and it was a very dangerous environment to work. So I gave up. But I still wanted to do it. And I thought maybe I should try it. I can propose it to them. And they bought the idea. So we thought about doing this and we had some help from some other people had filmed this particular area. And we didn't know that this was the largest garbage dump in the southern hemisphere. When we went there. Grandmasho was the name of the site, you know. And I thought that I was just going to make these drawings using this material. And all of a sudden I see this workforce there. The people who actually do live, make their living from the extraction of recyclables. Brazil is the second country in the world that recycles more. Not because we're organized, it's because it's a lot of poverty that lives from it. And I became involved with these people and not for how different they were, but how similar they were to me. And I kept thinking that maybe if by some turn of events, if my father had become sick, I could possibly end up in a place like that. And it's amazing to think about that, right? I invited them to work on their own portraits using the material that. The same material that they do with everyday. Because that was what makes something change where you use. You work with something in a certain way, you work in a different way to actually create something completely different than what you're doing. These people, they had not seeing most of the representations of themselves. They were. That they had, were from cell phones that they were. They were found tiny little, you know, pictures of themselves. Sometimes in a document they'll see like a little, you know, identity papers and things like that. And all of a sudden they were. We had a whole like something the size of a basketball court where we make these portraits. They. And you cannot immediately see what they are because they are not they're elongated and they're trapezoidal. They are a number of. It's a number of forces. So. So when you're looking at that look just looks like junk. But when you go on top of a 10 meter tower, you see what it is. And so we had this in the film, this reveal. And it was very, it was very emotional because when they see themselves at that scale, it's. Something changes, you know, in the way.

Vic Muniz (53:01)

But after a number of years, you're an artist already, so what do you do? What is that for? So this question starts haunting you. And I think Wasteland was for me, what really changed is also I realized the art can be a lot more just a simple practice Something that you do and you test on people. And I mean, one thing for one thing is just. It made me realize that when you are dealing, you know, you're dealing with the world or the interface, you know, I think art, my concept of art is that my idea is that art is the evolving interface, you know, between mind and matter, between consciousness and phenomenon. And when you're dealing with that, you're already dealing with the world. But the fact that you can fix or change the world beyond the model. Yes, you see that. That is. I had the work. The film had an impact on these people's lives that extended beyond the simple fact that they were looking at something that. Or the fact that they actually were part of the process of doing their portraits, which was already something important. But we sold the works. We actually sold, gave them the money. We worked, we did many things. But I think the most. The greatest achievement of the film was it changed the perception of the entire Brazilian population. Because it was a big deal there about who these people are, you know, and dehumanizes that. Before, people didn't think of them as people, as workers, you know, as professionals. And now it allowed them also to organize better. And now these cooperatives, they're not in garbage dumps anymore. They get the recyclables directly on large events like the Olympics or the World cup or they were allowed to actually, now they're organized to actually pick up the recyclables directly when they are disposed, where they are disposed. And I think there was. Soap operas are big in Brazil, right? And there's this guy, Kawan Raymond, very good looking guy. And once I was having lunch with my wife and this guy just, hey, I want to talk to you because I'm going to portray catador guys, people who actually live from recycling. And I said, are you? Yeah, you are? He said, yes, yes, I said. And then you did the film. And I wonder if you could helped me out because I want to meet some people and actually learn. Because I want to do a laboratory. Because I want to know more about. To become. To be a. To do the character well. And when the best looking guy in Brazil is just doing a. Playing a catador means that we did something, you know, we achieved something. The perception is different. But for me, I think the biggest thing is just like I realized the power. And actually if I do something that is remotely political, which I think this film is, I think you have to come with a capital exchange. You have to transform that in something that actually helps directly the people you're not just illustrating a problem, you actually acting upon it. And I've been lucky with that.

Vic Muniz (57:46)

It's a conclusion. I said, no, it could be you. Could be me, absolutely. You know, and the fact that I think this is the most important part. When you perceive something that is not right, you know, and the fact that sometimes you have the opportunity to act upon it and you end up winning more than giving. You know, I have always had this sort of, like, adept, I mean, depth to these people, to this project in general. But I think there was this because after Wasteland, I became very attentive, you know, like very aware. I'll give you an example. Between my house and my studio, there is a daycare center which is run by nuns. I got married at this church and I baptized my daughter in this church because by convenience, it's very close, right? They came to me one day, they said, we're about to close the daycare center. The daycare center attends all the poor people that live in Rocinha, all the favelas nearby my house. And the people, these people work in the south side on the houses of rich people, and they leave the kids there, you know, and there's one sound that I love from a safe distance. It's like when they go on breaks, they go, ah, I love that sound, you know, And I couldn't bear the fact that I wasn't going to listen to it a little more. And I said, well, what's the problem? Oh, you know, there's not many baptized people are not doing weddings here. And they were actually, we're about to Close. We're going to serious finance. And when we got married there, we actually got married in the parking lot because there's a garage. But my wife is very good at transforming spaces. So she turned it into sort of like a magic jungle. And I said to them, so, the month of December, and. And I said, oh, are you free? She said, yeah, we don't have anything going on. I said, oh, I'm going to give you this money just to help you this month, but I think I have a better idea. So I was working on portraits of saints for many, many years. And obviously it's very hard to show this in a gallery or show this to a museum. People say you study. When you study art, you study all the, you know, Caravaggio, Giotto. There's all sacred images a lot, you know, Catholic canon, you know, and then. And these images are supposed to be in a. In a palace or a church, you know, and you study this. And then when you. You get graduated and you're supposed to be atheist and communist, you know, so it's kind of like they're very confusing, you know. So I love religion in general. I'm very curious about it, and I think belief is something that sets us apart from any other living species, and you have to understand it. But also it's something that is a broad subject that deserves attention if you're an artist. And I had these pictures of saints that I didn't have a place to show them. And I said, well, what if it's a church and a convent there? It's a perfect place to have this show. And then I. Because I had. Before, they were superheroes, they were saints, right? They're very similar, you know. And you have to understand, there is a direct relationship between the Marvel superheroes and the saints. They perform. They do amazing things. They're superhuman, you know. And I thought, oh, this would be a. So I said, what if we do a show? And I showed the nuns, they really liked the idea. And we sold the works. And with the sale of the works, we managed. It's open right now, and we managed to keep it open. You know, things like this. Another example, the National Museum caught fire. The major museum in Brazil. The entire collection was burned. And this is the place where I took my kids. And I was working in a project in Holland, Holland, at the time. And I thought, oh, God, this is a place that all. They burned the. They had the skull called Lucia. 14,000 years old, you know, like the greatest. The oldest found, you know, skull of a humanoid. All These things. There was mummies, there were the Egyptian, There was a paleontology collection. There was several dinosaurs and things. There were. It was the largest entomological collection, I think, in the Southern hemisphere. You know, millions of little specimens. Butterflies, bugs and things like that. I love museums. You know, I am a museum rat. So I felt so bad that I realized that during the. You know, this happened during the Bolsonaro last administration, and they had. The funds for museums for institutions were severely cut, so they had no money to deal. They had a lot of 3D renderings that they have tomographies that they had done on some of these artifacts, but they needed to actually print them or use digital work. They had no funding for this. So I teamed up with them and actually they gave me the ashes of this specific artifact. So, like, for the Lucia, for the skull of the Paleolithic skull, they gave me the ashes of the skull, and I actually made the picture of it. And we made several of these because there's something very incredible. Normally, archeologists, they work in the field and they bring what they find to the museum. There were teams of archaeologists working in the museum, something completely unheard of. So they're very organized. They had little Tupperware with specific dust from specific things. They gave it to me, they lent it to me. So I made pictures of it. With the funding from the sales, we actually managed to keep the program of the rescue alive so that we actually helped them reconstruct many, many things because they were not having any other help from the government or anything. And now I'm going to have. This is an exhibition that I'm very excited to do because the museum is going to reopen the first wing. And they're going to reopen with this exhibition, the Museum of Ashes. And I never had the opportunity to show it before. So they're going to open with the sort of a memory of these artifacts, you know, that they were there before. And it goes on and on. You know, I've been able to actually do things. They had a practical, physical impact, you know, And I am very fortunate that I had the opportunity to do these.

Vic Muniz (70:32)

Well, we live in a era of quantitative value, you know, like, I think it's very interesting that before, let's say, in a time where there was art, criticism was very important, you know, and people read about art and that had a sort of. There were movements, there were manifestos. You know, actually, people were influenced by each other. There was. There was. The. The flows in the art world were easier to identify. Sometimes the opinion of a single individual would just set, you know, things in motion in a particular direction. The idea of quality, you know, even though it was probably artificially developed, like you just mentioned, you know, there were other forces, you know, acting upon it. Like in the case of Abstract Expressionism or. Or even, you know, Russian pamphletary posters. And there's always, like, outside in forces that come and shape the taste or the market of art. But what seems like we live in a. In a digital era, you know, like, numbers sort of took over, you know, and you Mentioned, you know, possibilities and statistical value. All of a sudden, you know, great art is the art that sells for a lot of money, or great images are the ones that get a lot of likes on Instagram, you know, and everything became very numerical. But what is interesting, though, is that how do you tap into taste when it's just based on what everybody is looking at? And it's. How do you. How do you gouge? How. How do you control. How do you measure these flows when, you know, the. The game is clearly rigged, the algorithms are actually used, they're designed, they're biased, they're. They're not impartial, you know, so there is an enormous control over taste and fashion and the way opinions go around. And it's a very scary proposition, I think, because it is just focusing a lot of power in the hands of very specific interests. And people don't seem to be aware of this. And art is being part of this whole thing because it's also something very basic. It's something that it's very easy to, you know, it's something that. It's just like the plasticine. It's like the. What you shape. It's so primitive, it's so basic, you know, it's so. It's like how ideas, visual ideas come, you know, you think visual art is something that. It's what shapes the rest of it, you know, I feel like sometimes I'm working with clay, you know, in face of all the types of sophisticated media there is around it sometimes. My first film was called the Worst Possible illusion because I think I'm dealing with illusion in the sense that only through illusion that you understand what reality is. But I cannot compete with people who are at the end of the technology of the simulacrum. You know, like at the time was Steven Spielberg, now is, you know, OpenAI. And instead I work on the other end of the spectrum of illusion. It's just like we look at something, you go, how can I be fooled by this? That you try to get the simplest, the most crudest, because you're not just fooling people, but you actually showing. Giving people a measure of their own belief. You know, how. Why do they get fooled by that? I think there's one work, probably my first photograph, it's of something, and it's at the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. And I'm so happy that he made it there. It's just a picture of a nail on the wall. I've seen it hung by a real nail. Yeah, it's called Two nails. And then what I do sometimes with the pencil, I figure out the light, and I penciled a little bit the shadow to match the shadow. So when you look at it, you see two nails, but when you walk, only one nail moves. Right. I think all my works come from that piece because there's something that moves, something that doesn't, something that is physical, something that is not, something that is things that is like a puzzle that doesn't really fit. And it's up to the viewer to actually try to make it fit, even though it doesn't. You know, for me is the most important thing is actually to create something that is left to the viewer to complete.

Vic Muniz (86:26)

We were talking about the idea there's something there, there's not something there. I think this is my thing with theater, for instance, comes from the fact that you mentioned something about before, about the ambiguity. The ambiguity immediately forces viewers participation. If you something that is complete, that is perfectly done, the viewer will look at it, will think of how good the artist is. I'm not interested in that because I don't even think I'm that good. I think I am good at creating connections, you know, and in. In a film, you see something that is happening, may happen. Before was edited, it was cut. But in the theater, you're seeing somebody becoming somebody else in front of you. Yeah. And you have the actor and the character sort of like, you know, negotiating a role. You know, how, you know, Sometimes in conceptual theater, like Braxton Theater, the actor has to appear as well. Stanislavski were completely opposite to that. But there's a very funny story that once I paid $40, I think, to see Anthony Hopkins to Lear. You know, he did it for a very brief period of time. And I felt robbed because when the moment the great actor became, you know, the dying king, he was Lear, he was not Anthony Hopkins. And I paid to see Anthony Hopkins, you know, and I didn't want to see. I've seen the King before, and I read about it. It's funny. But then a few weeks later, I paid like $5 to see a guy perform Otello in a place in Queens, was an abandoned fire station. And. And this guy, you know, he started out, he was a. His name was Joey. He was a Kanamator theater actor. And he started out, you know, he's an Italian guy with a face painted black. He was doing Otello. And then in the first five minutes of his performance, he was, you know, the Moorish general. You know, he was Otello. And then he. After five minutes, he became. He was a plumber. I talked to him. Then he became the plumber, and then he became the general and he became the plumber. Plumber. And then for $5, you know, I had two tragedies for the price of one. But this guy Joey, while Anthony Hopkins delivered a character, Joey delivered theater. And, you know, the pleasure that I had watching the amateur actor was the fact that I was trying to figure out exactly when the plumber became the general and when the general became. There's a moment like, and this is, for me, the magic of art is the sublime is when you are looking at something and it's a landscape and you approach a little bit more and it becomes just pigments, you know, minerals and, you know, paint, just material. And then you go back and it's a landscape.