Discarded items are arranged, with order at times, without at others. The image of a leaning figure is formed from the rusting, bent, and dysfunctional. Reflecting the form, the mirroring line is at a slight angle – sloping downwards to the left. Two white bottle crates, two blue-grey clock boxes, and two branded aluminum canisters perfectly reflect each other across the demarcating line, raising for a moment the possibility of an actual mirror. Questionably two white boxes, two wheels in polygonal wire frames, and oversized hair curlers do the same on the microscopic level. In the macroscopic, Narcissus bends down to regard themselves. They approach themselves not only in their own eyes. Even in this observer’s view the faces come closer, and the bottom image puckers for a kiss, eyes closed. The lower figure holds less detail, there is less dimension and shadow in their face, they have no ear. The folds and crinkles of the puff-sleeved shirt are not drawn in the same edgy comic book style. A circle of a knee, textured to a roundness, is warped. The bottom half that is not quite a half is comparatively swimmy and unclear, as an image in water. The one word that stands out, OFICINA, is marked on a matte metallic sign, bounded in red.

A photograph was taken from far above. The items, in their thousands, are laid out on white cement ground, creating this image singularly in the view of this point in space. Tires, waste baskets, gas bottles, wheelbarrows, a painting, a traffic cone, spoked wheels, table fans, car seats, cash registers, hundreds of mechanical components, a curved ladder, a deformed corroded barrel, hundreds of flattened metal cans, a red motorbike helmet, an anchor, and several species of chair have been placed one by one by their caretakers’ hands. The mass is brown with tints of grey. Reds and blues come forth in singulars. It is a near exact replication of Caravaggio, though it is distinctly of 2005. It retains none of the floral patterns, heavy layers of oil, aging in the reflection, or European locality which are present in the original. A collage from massive amounts of waste, its aesthetic akin to illustration that employs sporadic stippling for partial shading and hard squiggly ink lines for contours and texture, it is highly contemporary.

Through the sheer mass and scale of the piece, Muniz communicates the current state of the world with regard to pollution and excess. The innumerable quantity of discarded objects, emphasized further by the imagining that a person carried and so intentionally placed each one, brings this forth. The depiction of Narcissus via this medium adds another layer to Muniz’s commentary. It is through self-absorption that consumerism runs rampant in our society today, and no figure is more iconic than Narcissus in this vein. It is a self-centered view of life that enables consumption to such excess as we see today; and it is self-doubt and insecurity in the desire for an orchestrated identity that producers capitalize on in their marketing and advertising. Furthermore, this self-absorption is propelling humanity towards its own demise. Narcissus’ tale sometimes includes the sudden aging of his reflection, warning him of the detriments of his self-obsession. And it is with similar implication that we should regard the sore sights of landfills, reports of habitat destruction, the sensation of breathing polluted air, and incongruously low prices of mass production that are necessarily exploitative. They are all symptoms of the impediments we humans are forming to our own health and quality of life. Our disregard towards the impact of the pollution caused by our excesses cannot last long, as the destruction of ecosystems that some choose to ignore at the moment will certainly come to bear on human survival at its critical point. Humanity will always depend upon ecosystems for its most central needs. It is this possibility of demise by self-absorption that Muniz symbolically evokes by portraying Narcissus from a multitude of waste.