This artist takes the spirit of protest from the streets to the gallery
Brazilian artist and activist Mundano channels social, political and environmental unrest in his expansive new solo show.
Brazilian artist Mundano is used to spending his time on the road and in the streets, making art as an act of protest. Known for leaving his colorful works of graffiti on walls around the world, Mundano is especially dedicated to issues of environmental and social justice and spotlighting the overlooked work of Brazil’s trash collectors through his Pimp My Carroça campaign.
For his latest project, though, Mundano stayed still. Over three busy months this past spring, Mundano made 54 new works in São Paulo. Vozes Mundanas, his biggest show to date, takes his activist energy to the white walls of a gallery, raising awareness on a wide range of social problems — including Brazil’s water crisis, global inequality and endless human consumption. The exhibition is open now at the Emmathomas gallery.
Mundano, a TED Fellow, tells us about this show and previews Cataki, a new phone app he created that could revolutionize recycling in Brazil.
Tell us about your new exhibition?
It’s like a punch in the face. My work brings up themes usually avoided on a day-to-day basis. It tries to make people reflect on the issues consuming our planet, and on human relations.
I think the biggest challenge of the show was to keep my activist side while working on a commercial exhibition. So I completely transformed the gallery. I created a big wall at the entrance, similar to the ones that we see all over the world — the Berlin Wall, or the proposed wall on the border of Mexico and the United States. I put cardboard on the floor of the gallery to make it look like a cracked lake bed, like the ones that I explored here in São Paulo and in California during the water crisis.
All of the new pieces have megaphones. The megaphone is a way to amplify voices, which is something I’ve always done with catadores — the waste-pickers of Brazil. For this exhibition, I also tried to amplify many other voices — including those of indigenous people, refugees, women and the LGBTQ community. I even rebuilt an actual megaphone for the show that visitors can pick up and use. People are using it to perform poems or to protest. In this way, it’s an interactive exhibition.
You use a lot of nontraditional materials in these new works — fire extinguishers, pans, books. Why did you turn to these materials?
We are consuming a lot — plastic and waste is everywhere. We’re not turning to a circular economy. Because I have daily contact with dozens of catadores, I was going to the junkyards every day where they sell their materials. It was marvelous what I found. For this show, I turned the waste that civil society is throwing out into art and protest. It’s much more interesting than working with new media and consuming even more materials.
For example, in most of the paintings, I used toxic mud from Brazil’s biggest dam disaster, which happened in 2015. A friend of mine collected the mud, and I used it on the canvas. I also made sculptures — most created out of reused materials I found on the streets or that were collected by catadores. For example, I used 53 fire extinguishers to create a sculpture that addresses the environmental and social emergencies we are facing today.
There’s also a soundtrack playing throughout the exhibit. How did you compose it?
Again, to amplify voices, I played the sounds of dissent in the gallery — from protests against the dictatorship in Brazil during the ’60s and ’70s to the 2013 protests in Istanbul to the recent Women’s March in the United States.
One of the most striking pieces in this show is your updated Mona Lisa. How did it come about?
That’s an interesting one. I found a golden frame, and it was exactly the size of the Mona Lisa. So I remixed the Mona Lisa character with the signature green character I use throughout my art, holding a megaphone, and I placed a spray can next to it. Behind the original Mona Lisa is DaVinci’s famous landscape of a green forest with rivers, and I updated that, too. On the left, there’s a big favela and an open dump. On the right, you have developed buildings. The contrast highlights social inequality. I also painted on the piece with the toxic mud from the dam disaster. It’s one of the highlights of the exhibition.
Besides working on this exhibition, you’re also building Cataki, a phone app that’s facilitating recycling in Brazil. What inspired you to do this?
We don’t have recycling collection in Brazil, or even cultural education about recycling. For many people, it’s easier to just throw stuff away. Even if you do want to recycle, there’s no way to do so. This is why in Brazil, 90% of materials recycled is collected by catadores in an informal market.
For years, people who knew my work kept asking me how to approach catadores and ask for their services, so I was connecting them to catadores almost every day. I realized there was a true demand there. Finally I decided to create an app to connect those people who want to recycle materials directly to the catadores who want to collect it.
We developed and launched Cataki—which could be translated as “Pick It Here”—last year with money raised from selling artworks donated by 300 artists. It’s been a big success. In the beginning, five to ten catadores registered with the app daily. Now we have approximately 600 catadores from over 150 cities in Brazil registered. At the beginning of 2018, Cataki was recognized and awarded by UNESCO, winning the Grand Prix of the Netexplo Digital Award, a big incentive to keep working hard for the cause.
How does the app work?
It’s simple. A map shows your location and the catador closest to your house. You can connect to the catador by calling them, as most don’t have smartphones. We also invite people to pay the catadores for the service because the money they make from selling the materials is not enough to live on.
This is making a real difference: some of the catadores have said that Cataki has boosted their income a lot, by up to 60% percent, because people are paying them for their services. So it’s working, and growing quickly and naturally. We have over 15,000 Android downloads and over 10,000 iOS downloads.
Your show closes next week. What has the reception been like so far?
I think I was able to demonstrate that it’s possible to keep doing my activist interventions on the streets while doing the same inside a gallery on white walls. As an artist, I couldn’t be happier. The exhibition has been a huge success with critics and buyers — but most importantly with the public.
I’ve also been able to welcome public-school children who are usually not in touch with the art world, and their presence brightened the gallery. Another highlight: guiding a group of deaf and blind visitors through the show. It was indescribable, the feeling I got from watching them touch the sculptures and respond to my work. I’ll never forget that. Being able to create an interactive solo show and experiencing the satisfying responses only inspire me to think more about future challenges.
The TED Fellows program supports emerging innovators from around the world to raise international awareness of their work and maximize their impact.
