- Mongabay’s award-winning investigation that revealed water contamination from palm oil plantations in Indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon inspired an art installation at UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago; the artwork was also exhibited at Chile’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
- A group of 12 theater design students and three professors from the University of Chile worked together with Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes to create the concept of an art exhibition to highlight the hidden environmental damages of “sustainable” palm oil found in many common items bought at grocery stores without our being aware of the impacts.
- Published in 2021, the Mongabay investigation revealed water contamination from pesticides used on oil palm crops and clearing of native forests for crops impacting the Tembé people in northern Pará state; in late 2022, the investigation was used as key evidence by federal prosecutors to obtain a court decision to probe the environmental impacts of pesticides used by oil palm plantations in Pará.
- The palm oil art installation and other successful projects in which journalists and artists collaborated were also highlighted at a panel focused on how to promote more inclusive journalism narratives to convey environmental and climate change issues.
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Karla Mendes is a fellow.
SANTIAGO, Chile — An award-winning investigation by Mongabay that revealed water contamination from oil palm plantations in Indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon was featured at 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 supermarket cart, tipping over under a mountain of products and spilling waste in river water — represented by melted plastic bottles — was placed at the entrance of the main pavilion of the Gabriela Mistral Library, where UNESCO’s event took place from May 3-4. Inspired by the Mongabay investigation, theater design students from the University of Chile worked together with this reporter to create the concept of an art exhibition to highlight the hidden environmental damages of “sustainable” palm oil coming from the many products found in grocery stores that consumers buy with no awareness of the impacts.
“Here are all the things that we people go to the supermarket, take the offers, take the sales — oferta in Spanish — we just take them from the supermarket and put them in our cart. And we see here the cart is already full and it spills everything else, it spills all the contamination that’s coming from the palm oil industry,” says Cristian Canto, manager 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 featured in the investigation. “And we see how all these products have these subproducts, that’s the contamination of the natural supermarket of the tribe. They explain in Karla’s investigation that they used to have this market for them taking the fish, taking the fruit, everything, and now it’s [all] contaminated by palm oil.”
Published in 2021, the Mongabay investigation revealed water contamination from pesticides used on oil palms impacting the Tembé people in northern Pará state. It also revealed the clearing of native forests for oil palm cultivation, contradicting claims by the companies and the government that oil palm crops are planted only on already deforested land. In late 2022, the investigation was used as key evidence by federal prosecutors to obtain a court decision to probe the environmental impacts of pesticides used by oil palm plantations on Indigenous communities and the environment in Pará.
Also in 2022, the investigation won 2nd prize in the Society of Environmental Journalists Awards for Outstanding Investigative Reporting and 3rd prize in the Fetisov Awards for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. In 2023, it was also a finalist of the Roche Health Journalism Award.
Juan José Alexander Contreras Muñoz, one of the 12 students behind the artwork, says he wasn’t aware of the effects of palm oil contamination from a lot of commonly consumed products, but now he is “thanks to the investigation and to this work process,” which was his first art installation. “The main message is passive consumption affecting the environment and the vulnerable population like the Indigenous group that appears in the investigation and that this finally ends up being a total impact on the environment, on the affected area.”
Muñoz adds it was a great opportunity to participate as a student “in such an important instance as UNESCO and to be able to expose, from our point of view as artists, the concept of environmental damage, to use art as a medium, as a tool to transmit, to be able to accuse a reality or a situation of vulnerability.”
Students and professors say it was the first time they worked together with a journalist and based their work on an investigation, and that they’re looking forward to doing it again. “I would like to be able to continue with that. It is a way of channeling art from what it is, the way in which we, the artists, the designers, can give it a function … and give it a way of showing the spectator this reality from that installation,” Muñoz says.
Canto, who is also a creator and an artist, says, “The research and concepts were already made and we could take it easily. All the materials were there to create. It was a very excellent experience, I have to say. I would do it again.”
On May 8, the installation was exhibited at Santiago’s Museum of Contemporary Art as a milestone of the academic year inauguration of the University of Chile’s Faculty of Arts. “This has not happened for a long time and it is the first time that all careers with different artistic expressions have been convened,” says Katiuska Valenzuela, co-coordinator of the project and program chair.
Amanda Bazaes, co-coordinador of the project and program assistant, says the exhibition was very successful, with many students and professors from several areas visiting the installation. “The students were very enthusiastic. Many people came to ask questions and take pictures.”
Now the professors are looking for more opportunities to exhibit the installation at the University of Chile, other universities and other places, “so that we can circulate the work,” Valenzuela says.
At the UNESCO conference, the palm oil art installation and other successful projects in which journalists and artists collaborated were highlighted at a panel focused on how to promote more inclusive journalism narratives to convey environmental and climate change issues. Headlined “Rewriting climate change narratives: artistic approaches to inclusive storytelling,” the panel organized by the Media Diversity Institute featured speakers including this reporter; the stream of the full discussion is available here.
Beyond Muñoz, the artists who created the installation are: 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 together with Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes to create the concept of an art exhibition to highlight the hidden environmental damages of “sustainable” palm oil coming from the many products found in grocery stores that consumers buy with no awareness of the impacts. In this photo, part of the creation 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 and feature reporter for Mongabay in Brazil and a fellow of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. She is the first Brazilian and Latin American ever elected to the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ); she was also nominated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Chair. Read her stories published on Mongabay here. Find her on 𝕏, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky.
Read the investigation here:
Déjà vu as palm oil industry brings deforestation, pollution to Amazon
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