Mongabay investigation turns into art on World Press Freedom Day

SANTIAGO, Chile — An award-winning Mongabay investigation that exposed water pollution from oil palm plantations in indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon was featured in an art installation at UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day conference in Santiago this month. The artwork was also exhibited at Chile’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

A shopping cart that tipped over under a mountain of produce and spilled waste into the river water – represented by melted plastic bottles – was placed at the entrance to the main pavilion of the Gabriela Mistral Library, where the UNESCO event was held May 3-4. Inspired by the Mongabay investigation, theater design students from the University of Chile worked with this reporter to develop the concept of an art exhibition that would highlight the hidden environmental damage of “sustainable” palm oil, which comes from the many products found in grocery stores and which consumers buy without being aware of the impact.

“Here are all the things that we humans go to the supermarket for, see the offers, see the sales – Offer in Spanish – we just take them out of the supermarket and put them in our shopping cart. And we see that the cart is already full and everything else falls out, all the contamination that comes from the palm oil industry,” says Cristian Canto, the director of the artwork, explaining that the plastic bottles represent the Amazon region visited by this reporter and the red light points to the Turé-Mariquita indigenous territory covered in the investigation. “And we see that all these products have these byproducts, that is the contamination of the tribe’s natural supermarket. In Karla’s investigation they explain that they used to have this market where they bought fish and fruit, everything, and now everything is contaminated with palm oil.”

The Mongabay investigation, published in 2021, uncovered water pollution from pesticides used on oil palm, affecting the Tembé people in northern Pará state. It also revealed the clearing of native forests for oil palm cultivation, contradicting company and government claims that oil palm crops are only grown on land that has already been deforested. In late 2022, the investigation was used by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office as key evidence to obtain a court order to investigate the environmental impact of pesticides used on oil palm plantations on indigenous communities and the environment in Pará.

The investigation also won 2nd prize in the 2022 Society of Environmental Journalists Awards for outstanding investigative reporting and 3rd prize in the Fetisov Awards for outstanding environmental reporting. It was also a finalist for the 2023 Roche Health Journalism Award.

Juan José Alexander Contreras Muñoz, one of the 12 students behind the artwork, says he was unaware of the impact of palm oil contamination in many common consumer products, but now he is aware of it “thanks to the investigation and this work process,” which was his first art installation. “The main message is that passive consumption affects the environment and vulnerable populations such as the indigenous group that appears in the investigation, and that this ultimately has an overall impact on the environment and the affected area.”

Muñoz adds that it was a great opportunity as a student “to participate in such an important institution as UNESCO and to be able to present the concept of environmental degradation from our point of view as artists, to use art as a medium, as a means of communication, to denounce a reality or situation of vulnerability.”

Students and professors say it was the first time they collaborated with a journalist and based their work on an investigation, and they would be happy to do it again. “I would love to continue doing this. It’s a way of moving art away from what it is, the way we, the artists, the designers, can give it a function… and give it a way to show the viewer this reality from within this installation,” Muñoz says.

Canto, who is also a creator and artist, says: “The research and concepts were already there and we were able to approach it with ease. All the materials were there to create something. It was a great experience, I must say. I would do it again.”

On May 8, the installation was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, as a milestone in the opening of the academic year of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Chile. “This hasn’t happened for a long time and it is the first time that all careers with different artistic expressions have come together,” says Katiuska Valenzuela, co-coordinator of the project and program director.

Amanda Bazaes, project co-coordinator and program assistant, says the exhibition was a great success and many students and professors from different fields visited the installation. “The students were very enthusiastic. Many people came to ask questions and take photos.”

Now the professors are looking for more opportunities to exhibit the installation at the University of Chile, other universities and other locations, “so that we can disseminate the work,” says Valenzuela.

At the UNESCO conference, the palm oil art installation and other successful projects that brought journalists and artists together were featured at a panel that explored how to promote more inclusive journalistic narratives to communicate environmental and climate change issues. Organized by the Media Diversity Institute, the panel was titled “Rewriting Climate Change Narratives: Artistic Approaches to Inclusive Storytelling” and featured speakers including this reporter. The stream of the entire discussion is available here.

In addition to Muñoz, the following artists created the installation: Carla Jesús Alcántara Basoalto, Sebastián Barbe Rojas, Valeska Cartagena, Anette Ignacia Cerda Tamayo, Victor Salvador Antu González Ancamil, Amaranta Paz González Urriola, Diego Antonio Huenchuleo Violdo, Catrian Ochoa Marchant, Victoria Nicolasa Orellana Stevenson and Alondra Estephania Salamanca Cerda.

Banner image: Theater design students from the University of Chile worked with Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes to design an art exhibition to highlight the hidden environmental damage caused by “sustainable” palm oil, which comes from many products in grocery stores that consumers buy without realizing the impact. In this photo, part of the creative team (left to right): Professor Cristian Canto, students Diego Antonio Huenchuleo Violdo, Juan José Alexander Contreras Muñoz and Sebastián Barbe Rojas. Image by Karla Mendes/Mongabay.

Karla Mendes is a staff investigative reporter and feature reporter for Mongabay in Brazil and fellow of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. she is the one first Brazilian and Latin American ever elected to the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ); she was also named chair of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Read their stories published on Mongabay Here. Find them on 𝕏, Instagram, LinkedIn, subjects And Blue sky.

Read the study here:

Déjà vu: Palm oil industry brings deforestation and pollution to the Amazon