VikMuniz

Vik Muniz, Traveling retrospective – Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana, October 1, 2016 – February 5, 2017

Along with the exhibition, the Eskenazi Museum is purchasing—with generous support from David and Martha Moore and Judi and Milt Stewart—the powerful diptych George Stinney Jr., from Muniz’s Album series. This addition to the museum’s permanent collection will make sure Muniz’s rich artwork lives on in Bloomington long after the exhibition is over. A photographic depiction of a collage made of thousands of photos, the work is based on the mug shots of the youngest man ever to be executed in the United States. The diptych speaks to a recurring theme of social justice found in Muniz’s work, and will provide a powerful addition to the museum’s collection of over 12,000 photographs.

The exhibition—his most significant and comprehensive to date—weaves together diverse phases of the artist’s career, ranging from his ground-breaking The Sugar Children series (1996) to his more recent Album pictures (2014-15), created using thousands of found anonymous snapshots arranged to reference images from Muniz’s own family albums. In both, the choice of material from which they were constructed relates to the imagery portrayed. While rooted in a Pop art tradition, some of Muniz’s images address more serious issues of war, colonization, and social injustice (including those related to the award-winning documentary Waste Land). Described as a trickster and a philosopher, Muniz transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary and invites us to look again.