Vik Muniz: Imaginaria

As part of Grand Arles Express, with which the Lambert Collection has been associated since its inception in 2016, the famous Brazilian artist Vik Muniz returns to the papal city eight years after his major solo show to present Imaginaria, a series of works that have never been seen in Europe. Exhibited at the Lambert Collection, it comprises fifteen photographs featuring saints as depicted by great artists, from Simon Vouet’s Saint Agnes to Philippe de Champaigne’s Saint Augustine and Jose de Ribera’s Saint Sebastian. In this new series, Muniz continues his exploration of the fascination with saints through the history of their representation in art and, consequently, the relationship between art works and the idea of the sacred. Composed of installations using everyday objects in incongruous situations (wire, sugar, ketchup, toys and cut-out magazines), Vik Muniz’s photography reproduces images from collective memory and questions the notions of originality and copies. By audaciously re-appropriating icons of art history and the media world, the artist proposes a new relationship to images whose meaning and originality seems to have been exhausted by their reproduction and global diffusion.