Dario Escobar

Darío Escobar (b. 1971, Guatemala City) is a Guatemalan conceptual artist known for large-scale sculptures and installations built from mass-produced objects — soccer balls, skateboards, bicycle tires, baseball bats. He studied at Rafael Landívar University and the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas "Rafael Rodríguez Padilla" in Guatemala City.

Escobar's practice centers on the formal and conceptual investigation of everyday industrial objects, repeating and reconfiguring identical items into new sculptural forms — a strategy he has likened to the obsessive display logic of a supermarket or sporting goods store. His work often stages a confrontation between past and present, pairing common consumer materials with traditional Guatemalan artisanal techniques and pre-Columbian mythological references, as in his Quetzalcóatl series, which recast steel and vulcanized rubber into biomorphic forms rooted in Mesoamerican imagery.

He represented Latin America at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 and has also participated in the Havana Biennale. His work is held in major public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), the Colección JUMEX, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Blanton Museum of Art, and the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, among others. Escobar divides his time between Guatemala and Mexico.