Brazilian Artist Creates Mural from Forest Fire Ash and Flood Mud to Combat Deforestation
Brazilian street artist Mundano has unveiled his latest mural, a poignant plea to halt deforestation, crafted using ash from forest fires and mud from flooding in Brazil. The mural, inaugurated on Wednesday, adorns the side of an 11-story building in São Paulo, adding a vibrant and critical message to the city’s extensive graffiti landscape.
Measuring 48 meters (157 feet) by 30 meters (98 feet), the mural features tree stumps from a burned forest alongside the face of Indigenous leader Alessandra Korap Munduruku, who is depicted holding a sign that reads, “Stop the Destruction” in English. The colors of the mural were created using ash from recent forest fires, including those in the Amazon, which have experienced devastating blazes during the worst drought on record. Mundano also incorporated mud from severe flooding that affected southern Brazil earlier this year.
Munduruku, recognized for her successful campaign against multinational mining companies prospecting on her tribe’s ancestral lands, was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2023 for her efforts.
Mundano’s mural serves as a protest against corporations that have expanded the agricultural frontier into the Amazon rainforest, primarily through large-scale soy plantations and cattle ranching, which have propelled Brazil to become one of the world’s top food exporters. The mural specifically calls out U.S. grain trader Cargill Inc., with the artist temporarily painting the names of Cargill family members on the mural. Mundano urges the Cargill family to uphold their commitment to removing deforestation from their supply chain.
Cargill has pledged to eliminate deforestation from its key row crops in Brazil by 2025 and from its South American soy supply chain by 2030, although the company did not respond to requests for comment.
In addition to ash and mud, Mundano utilized clay from Indigenous reservations that have struggled to secure recognition of their land rights, often clashing with farmers. The mural also includes paint made from urucum, a red tropical fruit traditionally used as body paint by Amazon tribes.
“This is perhaps the largest mural ever made with natural pigments,” Mundano stated as he mixed the paints for the work. He added, “The names we are writing here belong to billionaires who continue to operate under a model that destroys ecosystem biomes and contributes to the climate emergency.”
The project was made possible through a collaboration with the conservation nonprofit Stand.earth, which funded the initiative.
