Vicente José de Oliveira Muniz, known as Vik Muniz (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈvik muˈnis]; born 1961, São Paulo, Brazil), is a visual artist living in New York City. Muniz began his career as a sculptor in the late 1980s. Muniz became best known for his 1997 series Pictures of Chocolate and 2006's Pictures of Junk.
In 2010, the documentary film Waste Land, directed by Lucy Walker, featured Muniz's work on one of the world's largest garbage dumps, Jardim Gramacho, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The film was nominated to the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 83rd Academy Awards.[1]
Vik Muniz often appropriates the images that serve as the basis for his artworks from works by other well known artists. For example, Muniz used jelly and peanut butter in the creation of the work Double Mona Lisa, After Warhol, 1999, based on a 1963 screen print by pop artist Andy Warhol and which, in turn, was an appropriation of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.