Juan William Chavez (He/Him), a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts, is an artist, activist, educator, and beekeeper of Indigenous Latinx and Irish descent. Chavez collaborates on social-practice art projects related to community building, environmental issues, food sovereignty, environmental stewardship, and decolonization. His creative practice includes public art, installations, knowledge-sharing workshops, paintings, zines, unconventional forms of beekeeping, and agriculture. In 2024, Chavez was named lead artist for Bloomberg Philanthropy's $1 Million Public Art Challenge Grant "Art Pollination: Building Food Justice through Creativity" for the city of Orlando.

Chavez's exhibitions focus on the holistic view of ecology, rituals, craft/labor, activism, archaeology of place, and his Peruvian heritage. His Native Bee Sanctuary was showcased in Counterpublic 2023 Triennial. It is a chemical-free teaching garden that supports native bees through self-expression, environmental stewardship, and community building. He presented "Pandemic Survival Blanket," an installation at Estamos Bien, La Trienal 20/21, El Museo del Barrio's first national survey of contemporary Latinx art. Chavez has participated in numerous artist residencies, including Artpace, San Antonio, TX, and McColl Center for Art, Charlotte, NC.

Chavez's interdisciplinary approach to art has gained the support of prestigious institutions like the Creative Capital, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, ArtPlace America, NEA Our Town, Ovation Network Stand for the Arts Award, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Art Matters Foundation. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times and Zocalo Public Square and is featured in "Artists and the Practice of Agriculture-Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960," published by Routledge. Chavez is a board member of the Old North Restoration Group and a member of the STL Indigenous Working Group.

Chavez is the director and founder of the art and ecology nonprofit Northside Workshop and a lecturer at The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He 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, MO, where he currently lives and works.