Ashes from Amazon transformed into city mural to raise climate awareness

Ashes from Amazon transformed into city mural to raise climate awareness

Tired of seeing the lush Amazon destroyed over many years, Brazilian street artist Mundano decided to let nature speak for itself: he painted a giant mural in Sao Paolo using ashes he collected from the scorched rainforest to raise awareness of climate change. The giant 1,000-square meter fresco titled “The Forest Firefighter”-featuring a heroic figure who is helpless in the face of a raging fire-was inaugurated yesterday. “The idea came from impotence. We’ve been seeing for decades how the jungle has been burnt, and in the last few years that has reached record levels,” Mundano, who goes by one name and calls himself an ‘artivist,’ told AFP.

Mundano, 36, collected 200 kilograms of ashes from different areas affected by fires to create the mural on a building close to Avenida Paulista, the main avenue running through Brazil’s largest city. The ashes came from the Amazon jungle, the Pantanal wetlands, the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado savannah.

Bringing ‘ashes to the people’

Mundano hopes his mural will raise awareness among Sao Paulo residents about the vast fires that ravage Brazil’s precious ecosphere every year. “No one sees the fires, they’re very far away in the Amazon. The idea is to bring the ashes here