Daniel Guajardo.
Daniel Guajardo
b. 1998, Quillota, Chile
Holds a BFA in Visual Arts from Universidad Diego Portales. Growing up in the 2000s, amid television, video games, and the rise of the internet, his childhood unfolded amid computers and screens, deeply shaped by popular culture. From an early age, he was exposed to music videos by artists such as Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, as well as widely distributed commercial films, forming a broad repertoire of visual and aesthetic influences.
His imaginary draws from diverse cultural and subcultural manifestations emerging within the context of globalization and consumer culture—visual languages that circulate massively in local environments and transform ways of perceiving reality from a Latin American perspective. Within this intersection, local and global imaginaries are brought into tension and confrontation. In his work, images from official visual culture—cartoons, brands, media products, and characters from the cultural industry—coexist with their displaced versions: copies, bootlegs, pirated materials, faulty reproductions, and informal appropriations.
He is particularly interested in the moment when an image loses its original status and begins to circulate differently, altered by errors, translations, poor printing, or unauthorized uses. Within this shift, irony and humor often emerge as constitutive elements of the work. These concerns are primarily explored through painting and drawing, with a strong emphasis on materiality. His practice constantly seeks new expressive possibilities in supports, understood not as passive surfaces but as active elements within the production of meaning. In parallel, he has also worked in other media, including sculpture, video, and animation.
He has participated in group exhibitions in Chile at institutions including MAVI, Matucana 100, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, and Isabel Croxatto Galería.
In 2023, he received an Honorable Mention at the MAVI Arte Joven competition, and in 2025, he was awarded the Acquisition Prize by the Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage of Chile.
Daniel Guajardo lives and works in Santiago, Chile.
