Vik Muniz | Art with wire, sugar, chocolate and string

Photo: Vik Muniz

Vik Muniz is a Brazilian artist who lives in New York. He creates portraits and art works from 'unexpected materials, such as string, chocolate, clouds and junk. I first came across his work when I went and saw the documentary Waste Land, which follows Muniz to the largest tip in Brazil to work with local workers to create portraits of themselves.

The purest form of interaction with these materials results in the complete transformation of the material and notion of 'junk'. It requires the viewer to also look beyond the individual object to see the portrait but at the same time values each and every piece that completes the bigger picture.

He delights in subverting a viewer's expectations.

Muniz's work really is the recontextualisation of what constitutes art and material input.