Indian Elephant, 1994 - Vik Muniz

A photographer and self-described 'low-tech illusionist' Muniz has created images in a wide-range of materials -- from chocolate and sugar to junk and toys to creating images, often art-historical, that he records with a camera. He has had solo shows at MOMA, MAM — Museu de arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The International Center of Photography, Paco Imperial in Rio, and MACRO in Rome, among others. A full-scale, traveling retrospective of his work was organized by the Miami Art Museum in 2006. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including those of MOMA, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Daros Latin America, Zurich; Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Tate Gallery, London; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Muniz has lectured at Harvard, Yale, the TED Conference and nearly every place where people are interested in creative concepts, and his work has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine and filled the pages of countless other publications. Waste Land, the documentary film about his art project in a Brazilian trash dump, won the 2010 Sundance Audience Award for Best Film and was nominated for an Academy Award.Read Less