A Brazilian artist uses ash and mud for a massive Sao Paulo mural lamenting climate disasters

Brazilian artist Mundano on Wednesday is presenting a massive street mural in Sao Paulo that uses ash from wildfires and mud from floods to highlight extreme weather events wreaking devastation across the country — as well as their causes.

Over 30 meters (98.4 feet) high and 48 meters (157.5 feet) wide, the mural depicts deforestation and severe drought in the Amazon rainforest with its parched brown earth and gray tree stumps. It features Indigenous activist Alessandra Korap wearing a crown of flowers and holding a sign that says: “Stop the destruction #keepyourpromise.”

It is a call to the Minnesota-based soy giant Cargill, according to Mundano. Soy farming is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation in the Amazon.

Cargill says on its website that it will eliminate deforestation from its supply chain in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay by 2025.

Mundano is seeking to hold them to account.

“We are tired of being a country, a continent where we and the natural resources we have here are exploited. ... We have to regenerate our planet instead of destroying it,” Mundano said in an interview on Tuesday.

Over the past few months, uncontrolled human-caused wildfires have ravaged protected areas in the Amazon, the vast Cerrado savanna and the world’s largest tropical wetland area, the Pantanal. Those blazes have spread smoke over a vast expanse, choking residents of some cities.

Drought has caused a critical situation nationwide, and forecasts indicate it will persist in much of the country through at least the rest of the month, according to a Sunday report from Cemaden, Brazil’s disaster warning center.

Climate change — primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal — leads to frequent and more extreme alterations in weather patterns.

The depth of the Amazon’s Negro River was 12.46 meters (41 feet) on Tuesday, a slight increase from 10 days earlier, when it registered its lowest level since measurements started 122 years ago. Tuesday’s depth was still around 6 meters (20 feet) less than usual for the same date in prior years, according to data from the Manaus port.

Rivers in Brazil ’s Amazon always rise and fall with its rainy and dry seasons. But the dry season this year has been much worse than usual.

Earlier this year, an unprecedented flood in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul killed more than 180 people, affected over 2 million people and destroyed urban communities.

Mundano, who calls himself an “artivist,” used mud from that flood collected by activist group Movement of People Affected by Dams in the mural, as well as ashes from the Amazon, the Atlantic Forest, the Pantanal and the Cerrado. He also used earth thrown away in dumpsters in Sao Paulo and clay collected from the Sawre Muybu Indigenous land in the Amazon, from where Korap hails.

“From floods to droughts, everything is connected!” Mundano said in an Instagram post on Tuesday, accompanied by a video showing the mural in Sao Paulo, which the artist said was his biggest ever.

Three years ago, Mundano employed ash from the Amazon to create a similar mural in Sao Paulo. That work depicted a firefighter standing amid deforested areas and featured a cattle ranch as well as trucks loaded with logs.

___

Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.