Hugo Zamorano: Omaha’s Muralist Telling Latine Stories in Public Color
On the walls of South Omaha and across neighborhoods often bypassed by public art, Hugo Alberto Zamorano paints narratives of culture, memory, and identity.
As lead artist behind Del Futuro al Pasado and dozens of others, his canvases are conversations between the past and the present, invited into streets, schools, and public spaces.
Zamorano was born in Los Angeles but rooted himself deeply in Omaha. He discovered graffiti and hip hop, and later earned his BFA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He helped found the ArteLatinX committee through OLLAS, joined the South Omaha Mural Project, and has created murals with nonprofits, schools, and businesses across the metro.
He has been involved in 29 local murals and collections, won awards like Best Emerging Artist (2016) and Best Public Mural for Del Futuro al Pasado (2017), and sits on boards including Great Plains Theatre Commons and Omaha Performing Arts’ Voices Amplified.
One of his most celebrated pieces, Del Futuro al Pasado (“From the Future to the Past”), stands in South Omaha as a symbolic bridge, a public dedication to memory, lineage, and community resilience.
He chose to include faces of people he knows: cousins, elders, friends, and even a friend who had been deported, melding personal, local, and historical stories in one mural.
In 2025, Zamorano again stepped into the public frame, leading a new mural project on UNO’s Barbara Weitz Center. In Community Visions II, he collaborated with UNO students and residents, expanding an earlier 163-foot mural into new scenes and voices across 75 more feet of wall.
Recently, he lent his artistry to theater. For American Mariachi at Omaha’s Playhouse, he painted set murals that echo the show’s themes of identity, gender, and cultural legacy, using monochrome tones on stage to support storytelling rather than steal it.
“I prefer being on-site,” Zamorano once said, “with the pressure of time, the elements, the people, it changes the result.”
And that authenticity shows: every mural is alive with layered care, every stroke tied to community, and every wall a shared page in Omaha’s unfolding Latino visual history.
Do you know someone whose story should be told — a mentor, educator, entrepreneur, veteran, artist, or advocate who has made a lasting difference in the Latino community? Please share their name and a little about their journey with us.
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