Mundano and his assistant artists painting a mural of Korap in a scorched Amazonian landscape, holding up a sign urging Cargill to rid its supply chain of crops grown on recently deforested land. (Inset) Mundano mixing water, varnish and ash collected from fires that had ripped through a Brazilian rainforest to create a palette of gray tones in Sao Paulo. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
EARLY last month, on a rooftop 11 storeys above Sao Paulo, popular Brazilian street artist Thiago Mundano sat on an overturned bucket, mixing water, varnish and ash collected from fires that had ripped through a Brazilian rainforest to create a palette of grey tones.
Over the ledge awaited a newly whitewashed, 1,400sqm wall of an elegant apartment building in plain view of the buses and cars heading down a main artery leading to the city centre.
That evening, he and five assistant artists would start painting a massive mural of an indigenous leader, Alessandra Korap, in a scorched Amazonian landscape, holding up a sign urging Cargill, the Minnesota-based agricultural giant, to rid its supply chain of crops grown on recently deforested land.
The project is a collaboration with the conservation non-profit Stand.Earth, which is funding the mural as part of a campaign targeting Cargill.
The final result was officially unveiled on Oct 23, though it is hardly a secret to the supermarket shoppers, passersby and those who work in the small shops that surround a parking lot below the mural.
“I’m already tired and we haven’t started yet,” said Mundano.
Over long days and some nights, Mundano and his assistants worked from eight suspended scaffolds.
They used paints made with ash from fires in the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil, mud from floods that destroyed swaths of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, charcoal from charred Amazonian trees and clay from drought-plagued river basins across the country.
“I’m connecting the droughts and the floods and the fires because it’s all linked,” said Mundano, who claims this will be Brazil’s largest mural painted with only natural materials (plus a water-based acrylic varnish), a style that has become his trademark.
The last step was to fill in the six-storey-high sign held in the mural by Korap, a member of the Munduruku tribe who was raised in Para state. It reads: “Stop the destruction” in English and Portuguese, with the hashtag #KeepYourPromise.
The “promise” refers to a pledge Cargill made in November 2023, setting 2025 as a deadline “to eliminate deforestation and land conversion from its direct and indirect supply chain” of soy and other crops in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Cargill is one of the largest exporters of Brazilian soy.“I want to show an image of our struggle,” said Korap, who was one of six winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2023. “It says we’re alive, we’re fighting every single day.”
In an April report, Stand.Earth cited 18 companies with “confirmed or suspected links” to Cargill that have deforested or converted wild land to soy production.
The environmental advocacy group covered the mural’s cost – around US$80,000, according to Mathew Jacobson, the Cargill campaign’s director.
In a statement, Cargill said it was “on track to deliver” on its commitment “to eliminate deforestation in soy supply chains” in the region. It also accused Stand.Earth of misrepresenting Cargill’s work.Of the companies listed in the April report, Cargill said, two are not in its supply chain, three have been removed and four have not done business with Cargill for years. Cargill said it had investigated the others and cleared them of using deforested land for crops.
Earlier, Mundano and his crew methodically painted, filmed and used brooms and water-filled fire extinguishers to erase 21 versions of the sign calling out members of the billionaire Cargill-MacMillan family, who together control the company.
The versions were based on paintings made by members of the Munduruku community at a workshop Mundano held with Korap in July. They will be delivered by Jacobson to the Cargill families’ homes in the United States.
“We see them as the leaders and the driving force of the industry that’s most responsible for the destruction of the forests and other landscapes as well,” Jacobson said, noting that Cargill’s private ownership avoids accountability to shareholders.
“Because of the amount of resources the owners have, the idea of putting in place systems to monitor those things is incumbent on them,” he added, “instead of continuing to profit from the destruction.”
Cargill more than doubled its profit in Brazil from 2022 to 2023, the company reported in April.
The campaign is also targeting a long-planned and much-delayed 933km railway known as the Ferrograo, or Grain Rail, meant to make it easier to transport agricultural and mining products to the Amazonian river port of Miritituba.
Parts of the planned route of the privately financed government project slice through protected lands.
Cargill said it was “not part of the consortium that was formed to build” the railway, but said that increasing transportation capacity while protecting the environment was vital to feeding the world.
The artists at the mural site had their routines down before they could finish their work. An artist known as Hullk (whose real name is Andre Franca), a native of Manaus, a city in Amazonas state, grated dried guarana fruit into water to make a natural stimulant commonly used in his region.
Daniel Wera, smoked a petyngua, a ceremonial pipe used by the Guarani people he has worked with in the Sao Paulo region. “I use it so I don’t forget why I’m here,” he said. “I’m here to represent the forest.”
Two sheets of paper displayed more than 20 earth and ash tones and their “recipes”.
Mundano sat on a varnish bucket, grating clay collected from a drought-stricken region near Korap’s home in Pará state. The resulting shade would be used for the traces of smoke floating by trees in the mural’s background.
“Is there any Atlantic rainforest left?” said another artist, Andre Firmiano, referring not to the fast-disappearing Brazilian ecosystem but to the dark grey tone used to outline the trees.
“No,” someone said.
“So let’s make some more.”
Later, Wera and Hullk hung from one of the eight scaffolds, adding detail to the feathers that make up Korap’s towering tiara, checking their work against a laminated photo of her.
Down below, shoppers and workers regularly looked up, curious and mostly admiring.
“This mural is a gift,” said Frankie Medici, 46, who runs the XBull Grill burger stand next to the lot and had grown accustomed to the drab grey paint that preceded the mural. “Customers have taken so many photos and wondering what’s going in the sign.”
A few shoppers made pointed jokes, wondering if taxpayer money was financing the art (it was not) and whether the warning to “stop the destruction” was directed at Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (it wasn’t).
Korap has posted drone footage of the in-progress artwork on Instagram.
“Whether we are rich or poor, whether we live in the forest or in the city,” she said, “if we don’t protect our Mother Earth, we will all crumble.” — ©2024 The New York Times Company
