David Manzanares
David Manzanares
I am an indigenous immigrant artist living in the United States since 2017. For over 15 years I have dedicated my artistic work to the production of figurative art, in a continuous experimentation with a wide variety of materials. The themes that permeate my work are reflections around three conceptual axes that are intrinsically related: identity - both individual and collective - the human being and migration
My production is primarily sculptural work and more recently public and community art. My aesthetic language is based on the human and zoomorphic figure that I seek to articulate with the presence of symbolic and aesthetic elements that are part of pre-Hispanic worldviews and of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, many of which coincide.
The medium that I use in sculpture is always subordinate to the form and context in which each work is produced. Both are an intrinsic part of the work and guide my selection of materials. This way of understanding artistic production has allowed me to sculpt and model with a wide variety of materials, formats, dimensions and details, as well as to explore interventions in public space with community art in the form of murals and workshops.
Community art is art made for a community and where the same community is an active part of the process of conceptualization and / or production of the work. The community art projects that I have developed recently have been in collaboration with members of the Mexican community from Lincoln, Nebraska. These works make visible and value the cultural features of this community that have historically been ignored and rejected. The works open the possibility for community members to connect, develop a sense of belonging to the locality where they live, and become more forcefully involved in improving their living conditions, their neighborhood and their city. Likewise, the works make Mexican culture visible, exhorting society in general to appreciate the active contribution that this community has made to the town, helping to build a more equitable society. The results so far have been murals and workshops. The murals are works of public art that portray people who live and give vitality and cohesion to the Mexican community in Lincoln. The murals are a reflection of this same vitality. The workshops allow the use of plastic experimentation to open spaces that increase connections between members of the community to address issues of social justice and expand their voice.