Juan engages in editorial projects and art policy development in both Australia and Chile, and his works often draw parallels between the political and social situations of the two countries. He studied Law and Fine Arts at the University of Chile in the 1960s and 1970s. His work has been widely exhibited and is represented in most art museums in Australia. Davila is primarily a painter who has experimented at different points with various media, including video. In his video works, as in his paintings, Davila employs various formal strategies verging on social realism to deal with issues of social and political oppression that result from advanced capitalist economies and their specific manifestations in urban landscapes. Much of his recent work has focused on issues of the exclusion and exploitation of refugees. Davila moved to Australia in 1974, and currently lives and works in Melbourne.