"If we live in a creative universe, we are constantly pushing the chaos out of the way to protect ourselves from the nonlogical — the natural," muses Vik Muniz at an interview late last year at Tokyo Wonder Site. "Even when you think, you create waste. But everything is made in a way to conceal the waste."

The New York-based artist isn't afraid to step into that chaos. One of his latest projects, currently on show at Tokyo Wonder Site's Shibuya galleries, was realized in the biggest garbage dump in the world, Jardim Gramacho, north of Rio de Janeiro.

There, he worked with the people who scavenge the recyclable refuse of the city — catadores in Portuguese — to make a living. Muniz, who grew up in Brazil, works in unexpected mediums, taking photographs of drawings he does out of sugar, chocolate, dust. But he had always wanted to do something with trash.