Monica: Hi, welcome to watchmojo.com, I’m your host Monica and today I had the pleasure to speak with artist Vik Muniz. He has an international reputation for photographing pieces out of everyday materials. The Brazilian-born, New York-based artist makes pictures out of dirt, diamonds, sugar, ketchup, or anything you can possibly imagine. How did you get into arts?
Vik: Well, it wasn’t a very natural thing for me, coz I was born in Brazil from a working class family. It took me 25, 26 years to actually set the fact that I could be an artist. It was only after I move to New York that I started thinking about that.
Monica: And why this form?
Vik: Photography has allowed me to be able to work in a number different medias, all kinds of scales, as long as I can format it through the medium of photography.
Monica: What is your main source of inspiration?
Vik: Toy stores, I don’t know. That actually, your question answers its own question, so, it’s actually not having a main source of inspiration.
Monica: So tell us more about the materials you use for your work.
Vik: I always lived in the, and work in the same place so I had in one corner of the house bunch of paints and stuff that’s made to be art, and the other had the kitchen. And I could basically do anything else I want as long as I photograph it. I just remain very open and, you know, able to find medium that you start thinking how do I, what should I render this image with. And then, it just comes to you at one point.
Monica: What is the message you want people to get when they see your work?
Vik: I basically want people to look harder at demotism and not just be in the position of a receiver of demotism. Get used to the ritual of getting toward demotism. To think about them, because that is the language of the future, you know, and the more you think about them the more you create an idea of a vocabulary, a grammar about the bigger world that surrounds you. The more you’ll be equipped, will be able to equip your children to dwell in the world of the future, which is very, very visual, and very, very complex.
Monica: Multi brigade.
Vik: Ginadem. Ginada base.