Artist Daniel Guajardo was recently featured in an interview with JOIA Magazine, one of Chile’s leading platforms dedicated to contemporary art, design and visual culture. In the article "Anomalías del ícono” (“Anomalies of the Icon”), the artist reflects on the references, processes, and ideas that shape his artistic practice.
The conversation explores Guajardo’s interest in the images that have defined global popular culture—from video games, cartoons, and comic books to pirate copies, unofficial adaptations, and local reinterpretations of these visual worlds. Rather than approaching these references through nostalgia, the artist examines the tensions between the original icon and its countless cultural mutations, revealing how images are continuously transformed through circulation, appropriation, and collective imagination.
In relation to his exhibition Little Nightmares at Isabel Croxatto Galería, Guajardo discusses drawing as a tool for activating free association, visual crossings, and alternative forms of thinking rooted in the experience of growing up in Latin America amidst a landscape saturated by globalized imagery. His compositions bring together characters, symbols, and fragments from diverse sources, creating scenarios where humor, strangeness, and distortion challenge dominant narratives within contemporary visual culture.
The interview offers valuable insight into the artist’s creative universe and the research that underpins a practice centered on the transformation, circulation, and reappropriation of images in contemporary society.
Read the full interview:
JOIA Magazine, "Anomalías del ícono: Daniel Guajardo”.
