ORLANDO, FLA.- Juan William Chávez: Art Pollination is part of how the City of Orlando is being recognized with the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge in 2025. Orlando is one of only eight winners chosen from over 150 project proposals from various U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Honolulu, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City. The Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge is a highly competitive program that selects projects based on their ability to transform communities through public art.
Juan William Chávez: Art Pollination explores the social practice of artist Juan William Chávez, grounded in his holistic perspective on aesthetics, ecology, ritual, craft, labor, activism, and his Peruvian heritage. Featured in the exhibition, Art Pollination is a multimedia installation comprising drawings, embroidery, zines, artifacts, and ephemera that reflect a specific archaeology of place and how that place harvests creativity through the pollination of art and ideas. As a Guggenheim Fellow, Chávez is an artist, activist, educator, and beekeeper of Indigenous Latinx and Irish descent. He merges art, culture, and community in a cross-pollination of people, disciplines, gathering, and storytelling. Chávez's bilingual (English and Spanish) exhibition showcases a multifaceted artist who blends aesthetics, garden cultivation, indigenous thought, and local histories into various forms of art that address vital themes especially relevant in today’s social landscape. The exhibition emphasizes sharing work and ideas as pollinators of art and well-being, grounded in principles of generosity. Through a collection of material culture and artifacts, symbolic tools and remnants from experiences, production, and human exchange are presented as deliberate gestures. Chávez creates containable yet evocative spaces that expand multiple cultural signifiers as visual traces or contemporary evidence for pollinating, for being, thereby offering elevated platforms for reflection, imagination, action, and respect. Chávez’s installation imbues meaningful significance in objects and relationships related to access to healthy food and food sovereignty, community building, the environment, and decolonization.
Juan William Chávez: The Art Pollination exhibition is part of the City of Orlando’s 2025 Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge project, Art Pollination: Building Food Justice through Creativity. This initiative aims to use art to raise awareness about food insecurity and promote solutions through public art activations and workshops that encourage dialogue about food justice. As the lead artist for this project, Chávez shares expertise in natural cultivation, beekeeping, pollinator education, knowledge sharing, and zine publishing as visual activations addressing the social challenge of access to healthy food as a human right.
The idea of creative art pollination is deeply rooted in Chávez's work and the Orlando community. This collaborative public art project, Art Pollination, emphasizes the important efforts being made to combat food insecurity through artistic expression. Key partners supporting Art Pollination include local nonprofits, Black Bee Honey, 4Roots, Hebni Nutrition Consultants, Ideas for Us-Fleet Farming, Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, and the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) in Orange County. The grant also funds local artists’ projects and art displays at various locations, such as murals, garden beds, urban trail markers, community billboards in the Downtown Arts District, and FusionFest. The project aims to harness the power of public art to inspire conversations and collaborations that can lead to innovative solutions for food insecurity, creating a meaningful impact on Orlando.
Orlando’s winning project, Art Pollination: Building Food Justice through Creativity, will utilize temporary art installations to raise awareness about food insecurity and hunger, while showcasing the important work of local nonprofit organizations addressing these issues. The Art Pollination Public Art Challenge is led by Shannon Fitzgerald, Marcia Hope Goodwin, and Mary-Stewart Droege for the City of Orlando.
The creative hub of nationally recognized artists features lead artist Juan William Chávez (Visual/Social Practice - St. Louis), Emily Johnson (Performance/Body Movement - New York), and Shawn Welcome (Poetry - Orlando). They are joined by a talented group of Orlando-based artists selected to develop new work that greatly enhances the visual impact of art to raise awareness of food injustice in our community.
Shree Chauhan, Alexis Collum, Roxana Cousino, Kellie Delaney, Tasanee Durrett, Harrison Foreman, Nathania Guerra, Peterson Guerrier, Ha'ani Hogan, N. Carlos Jefferson, Christopher Jones, Marquis Lee, Delia Miller, Luca Molnar, Sinuhe Vega Negrin, Justin Skipper, Mado Smith, PJ Svejda, Gina Tyquiengco — art will engage the public throughout Orlando. Works will be displayed along the Orlando Urban Trail, in City neighborhoods such as Parramore, Holden Heights, Downtown Orlando, and Loch Haven Park, as well as community centers, food partner sites, Parramore Main Street District, on urban billboards, and at exhibitions at CityArts, Downtown Arts District, Terrace Gallery, City Hall, and other locations within the City of Orlando.
Juan William Chávez: Art Pollination is organized by the Mennello Museum of American Art This exhibition is generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of the Mennello Museum of American Art. Orange County Government provides additional funding through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.
