Juan Davila
Born:
1946 in Santiago, Chile
Lives in:
Melbourne, Australia
Working between Chile and Australia, since the early 1970s Juan Davila has used the medium of painting to engage in debates around aesthetics, politics and sexuality, drawing on its rich and varied histories in Latin America, Australia, Europe and North America. Davila has brought to high art the visual landscape of popular culture, producing a uniquely provocative, powerful and influential body of work.
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.
Juan Davila’s Guacolda Brunhilde and Sacerdote Wotan, 2011. Courtesy the artist and Kalli Rolfe Contemporary, Melbourne © Juan Davila. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney. Photograph: David James.
Left to right: Juan Davila’s 2021, 2020; Australia, 2013. Courtesy the artist and Kalli Rolfe Contemporary, Melbourne © Juan Davila. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney. Photograph: David James.
Left to right: Juan Davila, Untitled, 2021; Untitled, 2023; Untitled, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Kalli Rolfe Contemporary, Melbourne © Juan Davila. Serwah Attafuah, 1471, 2024. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from Create NSW and the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. Courtesy the artist. © Serwah Attafuah. Juan Davila, After Image Wilderness, 2010. Courtesy the artist and Kalli Rolfe Contemporary, Melbourne © Juan Davila. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Museum of Contemporary Art. Photograph: Hamish McIntosh.
Left to right: Juan Davila, Enriqueta-Sieglinde Flees, 2011. Courtesy the artist and Kalli Rolfe Contemporary, Melbourne © Juan Davila. Sergey Parajanov, The Colour of Pomegranates, (Out-takes and camera tests), 1969. Courtesy of the National Cinema Center of Armenia and Daniel Bird © Daniel Bird. Anne Samat, Cannot Be Broken and Won’t Live Unspoken #2, 2023. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with assistance from MARC STRAUS, New York Courtesy the artist and MARC STRAUS, New York © Anne Samat. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Museum of Contemporary Art. Photograph: Hamish McIntosh.
Chau Chak Wing Museum
Australia, 2013
Guacolda Brunhilde and Sacerdote Wotan, 2011
The Proposition, 2021
Valdivia-Mime y Lautaro-Siegfried, 2011
That is No Man, 2010
2021, 2020
oil on canvas
Courtesy the artist and Kalli Rolfe Contemporary, Melbourne
If you were to ask Juan Davila why he began to paint, he might answer, as he has before, “An enjoyment … does not need explanation.” Over an artistic career spent lacerating political figures, government policy, and state control, the artist has not felt the need to explain his motivations.
Since he started out, Davila’s paintings have unflinchingly interrogated cultural, sexual, and social identities, taking cues from popular culture, political discourse and mythology to create a complex and provocative body of work. Born in Chile, Davila moved to Melbourne in 1974 after the fall of the socialist Allende government. His work is devoid of social directives, and is instead rich with allusions to the joys, anxieties, shames, and triumphs of the contemporary moment. Davila either refuses to decide on a position, or if he has, won’t reveal it. Instead, he moves through narratives, nightmares, and nations like a dreamer through the subconscious. Like chasing down a stranger who turns to reveal that his face is your own, to try and decode Davila is to confront your internal biases.
Often depicting surreal scenarios, each piece, as vibrant and heated as the flames Davila paints, moves beyond the subject it appears to be critiquing, and grapples instead with making something beautiful “just because we still can, and it cannot be controlled.”
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
Enriqueta-Sieglinde Flees, 2011
oil on canvas
Untitled, 2021
oil on canvas
Untitled, 2023
oil on canvas
Untitled, 2021
oil on canvas
Private collection, Melbourne
After Image Wilderness, 2010
oil on canvas
Courtesy the artist and Kalli Rolfe Contemporary, Melbourne.
Asked why he chose painting, Juan Davila once answered, ‘An enjoyment … does not need explanation.’ Over an artistic career spent lacerating political figures, government policy and state control, the artist has indeed consistently refused to explain himself.
From the outset, Davila’s paintings have unflinchingly interrogated cultural, sexual and social identities, taking cues from popular culture, political discourse and mythology to create a complex and provocative body of work. Born in Chile, Davila moved to Naarm/Melbourne in 1974 after the fall of the socialist Allende government. However, his work does not suggest what ‘should be’, instead richly illustrating the joys, anxieties, shames and triumphs of the contemporary moment. Psychological and psychoanalytic themes are often present, but the artist refuses to articulate or reveal a clear position, prompting us to question our own biases.