Through an examination of how the Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz has sustained two distinct art practices that respond to two contradictory art historical contexts and sites of reception, Western postmodernism of the 1980s and the Brazilian avant-garde of the 1960s, I argue that his art practice provides an alternative reading of what constitutes a socially engaged art practice in global capitalism. By analyzing Muniz’s art practice in relation to Grant Kester’s and Hal Foster’s opposing perspectives regarding contemporary political art, I demonstrate that the political locus of Muniz’s Brazilian-based art practice is situated outside the aesthetic realm, and instead lies in how the international market circulation of this work enables him to stimulate social change in his collaborators’ communities. In doing so, my analysis contributes to the larger contemporary theoretical debates concerning the political effectiveness of a contemporary art practice that embraces rather than opposes market economics.