David Manzanares

This project will generate the collective conceptualization and creation of a Sculpture in the Community Garden de la Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim of Omaha.

The Mayan Community of Omaha Pixam Ixim wants art representing Mayan Culture in their public spaces. This grant will facilitate collaboration with the Indigenous artist David Manzanares for The creation of a Sculpture for their community Garden in the city of Omaha. The Mayan community of Omaha and the Chinanteco Sculptor David Manzanares will work together to create a sculpture made of concrete. David Manzanares will make the sculpture with the collaborative input of Pixam Ixim. Then The community will place it in their Community Garden in the south of Omaha.

David Manzanares (American, born Mexico. 1985-) is an indigenous Oaxacan artist living in Omaha. His sculptures, and murals reflect collective identity, migration, and indigenous cosmovision. David is heavily influenced by ancient Mexican art and his grandmother, a medicine woman skilled in textile weaving who taught him handcrafting from a young age.

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 small 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 the active contributions indigenous peoples, and immigrants make to our city. The works allow community members to connect, cocreate installations, generate spaces for meetings and parties, encourage a sense of belonging to the locality they live, 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 generations to come, exploring reciprocal relationships between humans and the land, focusing on the role of animals, plants and migration in both Native American and Western traditions.

Website: DavidManzanares.art

IG: @adavei_