David Manzanares
David Manzanares (American, born Mexico. 1985-) is an indigenous Oaxacan artist living in Omaha. David is heavily influenced by ancient Mexican art and his grandmother, an indigenous medicine woman skilled in textile weaving who taught him handcrafting from a young age. His sculptures and murals reflect collective identity, migration, and indigenous cosmovision.
Over the last eleven years, Manzanares’ focus has been serving Indigenous, brown, Black, and underserved communities through art education and collaborative projects bringing equity to the places he lives: building relationships on the block while painting murals that celebrate specific community members, teaching multilingual intergenerational workshops that bring people together across difference, painting murals sharing his traditions like Dia de Los Muertos, and sculptures in the form of street art to bring art to the streets.
Manzanares’ primary medium is sculpture, and, more recently, he expanded into murals and street art around the Midwest to share his indigenous culture. His public art exhorts society to appreciate indigenous peoples and immigrants’ active contributions to our city. The works allow community members to connect, co-create installations, generate spaces for meetings and parties, encourage a sense of belonging to their locality, and become more forcefully involved in improving their living conditions and neighborhood.
His art brings visibility and empowerment to underserved populations reinforcing their voices and generating a better space for his kids and future generations. It explores reciprocal relationships between humans, the land, and the spirit, focusing on the role of migration, animals, and plants in Native American and Western traditions.
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