Vik Muniz
In this video, Brazilian visual artist and photographer Vik Muniz shares his process for creating intricate collages based on images that “are already part of our collective visual memory.” This series, titled “Pictures of Magazines”, features his replica of Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” from hand-torn scraps from magazines.
Muniz was featured in 2010’s documentary Waste Land, which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 83rd Academy Awards. It did not win (it got beat by a film about the financial crisis in the late-2000s), but it shows his art works created from trash found at one of the largest garbage dumps in the world located just outside of Rio de Janeiro. If you haven’t seen this documentary yet, I would highly recommend that you watch it. The beauty that Muniz is able to generate from discarded items is quite impressive… and the garbage dump is enormous!