Bio
dAniel Alvarado-Arias is a Venezuelan-born visual artist, designer, and community educator based in San Francisco. With over a decade of experience across Latin America and the U.S., his work integrates visual arts, curation, and community engagement. He is the creative director of a philanthropic arts initiative that produces multidisciplinary events supporting social causes. dAniel also leads monthly bilingual workshops for older adults in collaboration with local nonprofits, and curates exhibitions that spotlight immigrant and emerging artists in alternative spaces. Deeply involved in activating public spaces through art and cultural programming, he helps foster community connections and artistic visibility in the city. His work is rooted in creating inclusive, participatory environments that center identity, memory, and shared experience. He is currently a Studio Artist at Root Division.
My practice moves between visual art, education, and community work. Throughout my career, I’ve facilitated artistic experiences for diverse audiences—many of them immigrants, queer individuals, older adults, or people outside of institutional art spaces—creating environments where expression, memory, and collective connection can flourish.
In parallel, I’m developing a visual exploration centered on paper, inks, and washes. I’m interested in expanding the use of watercolor to unconventional surfaces such as fabric or walls, and in experimenting with material processes like salt crystallization and chemical reactions. My current focus is a monochromatic a series dedicated to the color gray—not merely a value between black and white, but a conceptual space—emotionally complex, often avoided, yet deeply resonant with my own experience as a multifaceted person.
My recent work also embraces black and shine—not as opposites, but as symbolic layers that speak of grief, elegance, mystery, and the things that emerge with their own light. Art has long served as a balm and a mirror in my life, and today I approach it as a field of open, sensitive exploration where the technical, emotional, and communal intertwine.
Selected Work
