Juan William Chávez

Juan William Chávez is an artist and activist whose multidisciplinary practice extends across public sculptures, installations, paintings, drawings, and unconventional forms of beekeeping and agriculture. He often works collaboratively on social practice projects addressing environmental conservation, urban ecology, and food rights. His exhibitions focus on themes of the urban environment, ecology, craft/labor, activism, identity, and decolonization. Chávez has exhibited at ArtPace, Van Abbemuseum, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, McColl Center, Tube Factory Artspace, 21c Museum Hotel, Laumeier Sculpture Park, and the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis. Chávez presented works in Counterpublic 2021, one of the nation’s largest public art exhibitions, and in Estamos Bien, La Trienal 20/21, El Museo del Barrio’s first national survey of contemporary Latinx art. Chavez’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art News, and e-flux. He is a featured artist in the publication Artists and the Practice of Agriculture-Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960. His interdisciplinary approach to art has gained the attention and support of prestigious institutions like the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, Graham Foundation, ArtPlace America, the Andy Warhol Foundation, and Art Matters Foundation. Chávez holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Chavez was born in Lima, Peru, and raised in St. Louis.