Juan Davila

Bio

Born in Santiago, Chile in 1946, Juan Davila moved to Melbourne in 1974 and has worked between the two countries ever since. Over the course of five decades, Davila has produced a uniquely provocative, powerful, and influential body of work. Since the early 1970s, Davila has used the medium of painting to engage in debates around aesthetics, politics, and sexuality, drawing on rich and varied histories from Latin America, Australia, Europe, and North America. Davila has brought to high art the visual landscape of popular culture. As a visual archive, Davila’s works are not simply reflections of a society awash with images, but a carefully articulated questioning of the hierarchies applied to cultural material, and by extension, cultures. Davila opens up the hidden tensions that lurk beneath any official history or national mythology.

Davila was included in Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, in 2007. The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney and the National Gallery of Victoria held retrospective surveys of Davila’s work in 2006–2007. In 2015, Davila participated in The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art with a presentation of monumental paintings. A major survey of Davila’s work of the last two decades was shown at Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile in 2016. In 2018, Davila participated in the EVA International Biennial, Ireland and held a solo exhibition at MUSAC, Leon, Spain. Davila’s work is included in every major museum collection in Australia, as well as significant international museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, and the Tate, London.

Juan Davila rejects the application of labels to his practice including “Queer”.

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