Vik Muniz's largest retrospective arrives at CCBB Rio in expanded form
Vik Muniz, Carlao (Atlas) (Pictures of Garbage), 2008; Digital C print, 130 x 100 cm.
RIO DE JANEIRO.—
The largest retrospective ever devoted to Vik Muniz has arrived at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Rio de Janeiro, bringing together more than three decades of work by one of Brazil’s most internationally recognized contemporary artists.
Titled “Vik Muniz – With the Naked Eye,” the exhibition opens at CCBB Rio after previous presentations in Recife and Salvador, where it attracted more than 150,000 visitors. Curated by Daniel Rangel, the show will be on view from May 20 to September 7, 2026, occupying the ground floor and first floor of the cultural center.
The Rio edition is the most expansive version of the project to date. It includes more than 220 works from 43 different series, ranging from photographs and sculptures to objects and large-scale installations. Around 20 works have been added for this presentation, including five pieces created by Muniz this year especially for the exhibition.
Among the most striking additions is “Ferrari Berlinetta” (2014/2026), from the series “Mnemonic Vehicles,” shown for the first time in Brazil. Produced in Turin, Italy, the sculpture is a life-size recreation of a toy car Muniz owned as a child. Measuring more than four meters long and weighing 650 kilograms, the work transforms a small personal memory into a monumental object.
Another major new work is “Tropeognathus mesembrinus” (2026), a giant pterosaur sculpture suspended in the Rotunda of CCBB Rio. Made of polymer infused with ashes from Brazil’s National Museum, which was devastated by fire in 2018, the work belongs to Muniz’s “Museum of Ashes” series. With a wingspan of 8.20 meters, the piece appears to hover in the air and can be viewed from different levels of the building.
The Rotunda floor will also be covered by a ten-meter-wide circular carpet printed with the image of “Medusa Marinara” (1997), one of Muniz’s best-known works, in which the mythological figure of Medusa was drawn using tomato sauce. The original inkjet print is also included in the exhibition.
The retrospective highlights the artist’s long-standing interest in illusion, memory, material transformation and the unstable relationship between image and object. Muniz is widely known for creating images from unexpected materials — including sugar, chocolate, garbage, ashes, thread, wire and food — before photographing them. His work often asks viewers to look twice: first at the image, and then at the material reality behind it.
“Vik Muniz is an illusionist — a magician in the construction of images that do not exist, but become real,” said curator Daniel Rangel. According to Rangel, the exhibition traces the artist’s production from his early three-dimensional works, made before photography became central to his practice, to his most famous photographic series and his most recent creations.
The exhibition also gives special attention to Muniz’s early sculptures and objects, which are less familiar to many visitors than the photographs that made him famous around the world. Several works from the “Early Works” and “Reliquary” series have been restored, recreated or presented in new editions for the Rio exhibition.
These include the restored bronze sculptures “Cloud Cloud 1” and “Cloud 2,” both from 1997, as well as “The Thing” (1989). Muniz also recreated works such as “Swinging Podium,” “Museum of Birds,” “Quantum Ethics — Childhood,” and “Flying Dutchman.”
The “Reliquary” series is presented as a key turning point in Muniz’s career. It was during the documentation of these sculptural works that the artist’s interest in photography became more deeply defined. The series explores recognizable objects made from unexpected materials, creating a tension between what viewers think they are seeing and what the works are actually made of.
Other series featured in the Rio edition include “Principia,” “Verso,” “Colonies,” “The Weimar Archives,” “Museum of Ashes” and “Mnemonic Vehicles.” Many of these works have rarely been shown in Brazil.
In “Verso,” Muniz turns attention to the backs of famous paintings, recreating frames, labels, scratches, stains and institutional markings normally hidden from public view. Works in the series refer to masterpieces such as Tarsila do Amaral’s “Abaporu,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” and Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.”
In “Colonies,” developed during a residency at MIT with biologist Tal Danino, Muniz uses living cells to create images, placing art and biotechnology in dialogue. The series reflects his ongoing interest in how images are constructed, not only symbolically, but physically and biologically.
The exhibition also includes a timeline of Muniz’s career, with video monitors showing works such as “Shadowgrams,” “Pictures of Thread” and “Pictures of Wire,” as well as an interview with the artist.
Born in São Paulo in 1961, Vik Muniz moved to New York at age 22 and built an international career from there. His works are held in major collections including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and Tate in London.
Despite his global career, the exhibition emphasizes Muniz’s continued connection to Brazilian popular culture and everyday life. For Rangel, the show reveals how the artist draws from street markets, neighborhoods, festivals, television, improvised objects and popular imagery to create works that are both playful and conceptually complex.
The retrospective is also personal. Muniz’s father, who supported his early artistic ambitions, died in May 2025, and the exhibition is dedicated to him.
After its run in Rio de Janeiro, “Vik Muniz – With the Naked Eye” will travel to CCBB Brasília in September 2026 and to CCBB Belo Horizonte in March 2027.
