Hauser & Wirth has announced worldwide representation of Los Angeles-based artist rafa esparza, in close collaboration with Commonwealth and Council, the artist's longtime Los Angeles gallery. The announcement was made on Wednesday 11 November 2026. Esparza, born in Pasadena, California in 1981, is best known for installations, sculptures and paintings made from adobe, the sun-dried earth brick of the American Southwest, and for a practice built around collaboration and community.

The gallery's president, Marc Payot, said the gallery was thrilled to join Commonwealth and Council in representing an artist of profound humanity and dedication to community, praising a practice that draws the earth quite literally into works marking time and the human hand, and that raises questions about ownership, agency and belonging. Esparza's institutional history includes the 2017 Whitney Biennial and the Hammer Museum's 'Made in L.A. 2016', and his work has also been shown at venues including the Getty Museum, Ballroom Marfa and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. His arrival makes him one of the few living Latinx artists represented by a gallery of Hauser & Wirth's scale.

The partnership will be visible quickly. Hauser & Wirth will present a new work by esparza at Art Basel Miami, which runs from 2 to 6 December 2026, and his first exhibition with the gallery will open in New York in autumn 2027. A monograph on the artist is also due from Zolo Press in February 2027, adding an institutional frame to a practice that has so far been anchored in Los Angeles and in collaborative, site-based projects.

The signing continues a busy run of additions to the gallery's roster. Hauser & Wirth has also recently announced representation of Lucy Bull, Leonardo Drew and Nathanaelle Herbelin, as the mega-gallery keeps expanding the group of living artists it shows alongside its established names.