Manto is a multidisciplinary emerging artist based in Bordeaux since 2017. In the final year of a Master’s degree at EBABX École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, he explores queer collective and political memory through the lens of his personal experience.
An Argentine migrant who grew up in the chaos of Buenos Aires, he was educated by punk-antifascist maricasfags and by the antrosunderground clubs of Buenos Aires nightlife — those sótanos oscurosdark basements where time seems to stand still. The precarity of resources, as well as the ongoing political, economic, and social crises, forced him to leave the country in search of a future elsewhere.
With his heart divided between two countries, encounters and places become material for storytelling. His practice initially served as a vital outlet before gradually becoming a space devoted to objects that turn into pink bodies speaking for him. This color, charged with history, refers to the pink triangle—a symbol of the persecution of queer people—now reclaimed as a sign of resistance, memory, and pride.
His practice engages a wide range of materials—metal, ceramics, wood, concrete—as well as whatever is at hand when resources are scarce. Since childhood, he has developed a particular connection to textiles and traditional sewing practices. He is interested in how the fragility of raw materials transforms into strength when they are assembled, stitched, and bound together, evoking forms of collective unity. Through this ancestral medium, he explores the links between art and activism as a tool for political resistance and liberation for marginalized communities.