Manny Manster

Manny Manster (Emmanuel Cortés) is a Mexican-American artist working on the topics of identity, migration, and systemic oppression. Manster navigates a landscape where his "Mexicanness" is exoticised in Europe, contrasting sharply with the harsh realities of the immigrant experience in the United States. He holds a BA in Fine Art and an MA in Urban Planning. His art work is rooted in skepticism toward the commercial art world, challenging “socially engaged” labels often applied to art and rejecting the pressure to produce commercially viable or politically sanitised narratives.

Manster incorporates his social anxieties into his work, embracing chaos and imperfection as spaces of truth. He integrates Mexican-American folklore in his work and his HIV status has increasingly taken up space within this. His storytelling dismantles internalised serophobia, presenting a life that transcends his serological status despite the lingering stigma in the era of U=U.

Currently, Manster is writing a novel set 1,000 years in the future, following an HIV-positive exile. This narrative serves as a cyclical catalyst for performance art. He is developing four performances introducing the story of "Harmony" before their exile, to be shown by the end of 2027 and 2028. By making art a continuous loop of creation and conversation, Manster seeks to counter his own misanthropic tendencies by thinking of the future with a sense of wonder and optimism. His work testifies that beauty and truth exist within imperfect, chaotic moments, offering belonging to those society often rejects.