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Juan Alcazaren (b. 1960) is a sculptor, bricoleur, collagist and object maker who works with a wide variety of materials ranging from construction steel to industrial and household detritus to ubiquitous everyday things like plastic monoblock chairs, school supply materials and melaware plates. Everything is material to him. In the 90’s he learned steel welding from Napoleon Abueva, CCP National Artist for Sculpture and has since always come back to this medium attracted by the way steel only “knows” how it wants to be formed. He always maintains a patina of rust on his steel pieces to show earthly life’s steady march towards death.

He tries to coax profundity out the ephemeral and overlooked in the world of the permanent and covetable. Alcazaren’s faith informed sensibilities make him see humble material as a metaphor for our own material nature, being creatures created by the Uncreated one. Juan Alcazaren has a bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture and studied sculpture the University of the Philippines where he also was a lecturer in 1995 at the College of Fine Arts. He was conferred the CCP Thirteen Artists Award in 2000. He lives and works in Pasig City, Philippines and continues to actively exhibit in major galleries and art fairs in his home country and around the region.

Poklong Anading’s (b. 1975, Manila, Philippines) practice utilizes a wide range of media from drawing, painting, video, installation, photography and object-making. Taking a more process-oriented and conceptual approach, his continuing inquiry takes off from issues on self-reflexivity, both of himself and others, and site-specificity in an ongoing discussion about society, time and territory.

He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting from the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines (1999). He completed residencies with Big Sky Mind, Manila, Philippines (2003 to 2004), Common Room, Bandung, Indonesia (2008), Bangkok University Gallery, Thailand (2013), Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2013), Philippine Art Residency Program - Alliance Francaise de Manille in Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle in France (2014) and das weisse haus, Vienna Austria (2018). He had solo exhibitions in Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz, Austria (2010, 2012 and 2020), Taro Nasu in Japan and Athr Gallery in Jeddah (2016), 1335MABINI in Manila, Philippines (2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019). He has been included in notable group exhibitions such as: Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2002 and 2012), No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia, the first exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS Map Global Art Initiative in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore (2013 to 2014), 5th Asian Art Biennial: Artist Making Movement, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2015), The Shadow Never Lies, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, Afterwork, Para Site, Hong Kong, China and in the Architecture Biennale for the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, Philippine Pavilion: Muhon: Traces of an Adolescent City at Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy (2016), disco nap, ‘We Didn’t Mean To Break It (But It’s Ok, We Can Fix It), Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, Portugal (2019), Far Away But Strangely Familiar’, Danubiana Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia (2019), Normal scheduling will resume shortly, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila (2019) and Arts in Common Artjog MMXIX, Jogya Nationa Museum, Jogyakarta, Indonesia (2019),

Anading lives and works in Manila.

Martha Atienza (b. 1981, Manila) has moved between both countries and cultures throughout her life. Currently she resides both in the Netherlands and the Philippines, dependent on where her projects bring her.

In 2006, Martha received her Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts and Design in the Netherlands. She also participated in the art programme at the Kuvataideakatemia in Helsinki, Finland, in 2005. Previously she exhibited video art, often described as snapshots of reality, as part of installations at galleries. Her works have been exhibited internationally at various art spaces, galleries and video festivals. In 2009, she joined a residency in Green Papaya Project space in the Philippines. She recently was awarded the Ateneo Arts Award with studio Residency Grants in Liverpool, Melbourne, New York and Singapore.

Atienza’s video installations are visions culled from her Filipino and Dutch side. The precept of ‘stranger’ emanates as crevice between the operations of understanding and imagining. Her work is a series mostly constructed in video, of almost sociological nature that studies her direct environment.

Atienza concocts her observations into fictions framed by gallery devices. She does not spare herself from this presentation of anomalies. Tempting as it is to construe identity within the operation of the gaze. Atienza hardly gives us this power. She is still the employer of this gaze, even when the view is centered on her own image. It remains a curious sensation: to stand as voyeur to another person’s voyeurism.

Currently, she is investigating the usage of contemporary art as a tool for effecting social change and development.

Felix Bacolor (b. 1967) finished his BFA in Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. His works have been shown at different international galleries through solo and group exhibitions including, the Valentine Willie Fine Art Project Room, the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, La Salle College of the Arts, Osage Gallery, Kwun Tong, Finale Art File, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Galleria Duemila, and Artinformal.

Yason Banal (b. 1972, Philippines) is an artist whose work moves between photography, video, installation, text and performance, exploring myriad forms and conceptual strategies in order to research and experiment with associations and refractions among seemingly divergent systems. He obtained a BA in Film at the University of the Philippines, an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths-University of London, residencies at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and AIT in Tokyo, and visiting lectureships at London Metropolitan University and Tokyo National University of Fine Arts. 

Banal’s work-in-progress is inspired by a conceptual astronomy around abstraction and document, ranging from Jose Rizal’s transglobal coordination and Isabelo Delos Reyes’ experimental archive amidst 19th century politics and anti-imperialist imagination, to possible contemporary coordinates in supernatural reality TV, lo-fi internet culture, geomarket forces and neo-migrant formalism. His work attempts to explore hidden meanings and associations through action led interventions. His works often place viewers and participants in vulnerable situations in order to trigger psychological experiences or memories. One such project, The Legend of the Sleepwalking Tricks, involved a group of young men who listened to death metal music while sipping milk laced with sleeping pills. Banal treads a thin line between illusion and reality, and a more serious threshold between passive consumption of art and violation of ethical taboos.

His works have been shown at the Tate, Frieze Art Fair, IFA Berlin, Oslo Kunsthall, Singapore Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Queens Museum of Art and Cultural Center of the Philippines. Upcoming projects include Bangkok Art and Culture Center (Bangkok), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (Manila), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow) and Queensland Museum of Art (Brisbane).

Argie Bandoy (b. 1973, Manila) currently lives and works in his hometown. He graduated from the University of the East College of Fine Arts, and was a member of the artists collective Surrounded by Water. He has had residencies with Big Sky Mind Artists Projects Foundation (2004–2005), and TARP TAKSU, Kuala Lumpur (2011). He has also joined group shows in the Freies Museum Berlin, the TATE Modern London, at Green Papaya Art Projects, MOP Gallery 1 in Sydney, the National Museum in the Philippines, the Cultural Center of the Philippines; and the Hong Kong Cultural Center. Bandoy has shown at TAKSU Singapore, Now Gallery, NOVA Gallery, Finale Art File, Mag:net Gallery, and more.

Pablo Biglang-Awa Jr. (b. 1963) is a contemporary artist. His first verified exhibition was Flippin’ Out: Maynila To Williamsburgh at Goliath Visual Space in New York City, NY in 2005, and the most recent exhibition was Not Yet Titled, 2014 at Artinformal in Mandaluyong City in 2014. Pablo Biglang-Awa Jr. is mostly exhibited in the Philippines, but also had exhibitions in the United States. Biglang-Awa Jr. has at least no solo shows but 10 group shows over the last 9 years. The most important show was Shoot Me at Mo Space in Taguig City in 2007. Another important show was at Goliath Visual Space in New York City, NY. Pablo Biglang-Awa Jr. has been exhibited with Juan Alcazaren and Bernardo Pacquing. Pablo Biglang-Awa Jr. is ranked among the Top 1,000,000 globally. Biglang-Awa Jr.’s best rank was in 2010, with the most dramatic change in 2011.

Ringo Bunoan (b. 1974) is an artist, writer, researcher, and curator whose work explores material and conceptual histories and issues of visibility and representation. Through common and found objects, installations, site-specific projects, photographs, and videos, she examines and reflects on the transient conditions of contemporary art and everyday life.

Bunoan received her BFA in Art History from the University of the Philippines in 1997 and has exhibited widely in Manila, Asia and the United States. Her works have been featured in several international exhibitions and biennales, including the recent Time of Others at the Singapore Art Museum and Queensland Art Gallery and Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia at the Mori Art Museum. She is the recipient of the Thirteen Artist award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2003. 

She taught at the UP College in Arts and worked as the Researcher for the Philippines for Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong. She is the co-founder of Big Sky Mind (1999–2005), King Kong Art Projects Unlimited (2010–present), and artbooks.ph (2014–present). She was the lead curator of Chabet: 50 Years, a series of exhibitions in Manila, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and the inaugural Manila Biennale: Open City in 2018. 

Annie Cabigting (born in 1971) majored in Painting at the University of the Philippines. She has been publicly exhibiting her works since 2001. Her first solo exhibition, “100 pieces” (2005), was shown in Finale Art File’s space in SM Megamall, Mandaluyong. She is a recipient of the Ateneo Art Awards and her work was included in the Prague Biennale in Czechoslovakia. Her works have been exhibited in galleries and art fairs in Metro Manila, Antipolo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Tokyo, Berlin, Basel, Madrid, Beirut, and Milan.

Her work, which ranges from painting to installation, is known for questioning what constitutes art: the various aspects of producing, looking and privileging visual images throughout history. Her subject matter involves people viewing art. They highlight the importance of the viewer to an artwork, for they determine whether the object is an artwork. She paints these paintings in a photorealist style.

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Bea Camacho (b. 1983, Manila, Philippines) is a visual artist who works in installation, performance, and video. She received her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, where she was awarded the Albert Alcalay Prize for Outstanding work in Studio Art and the David McCord Prize for Achievement in the Arts. 

She is a recipient of the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines. She was also selected as an exhibiting artist for the 2006 Asian Contemporary Art Week in New York City and for the 2009 International Women Artists Biennale in Incheon, Korea. Recently, her exhibition at MO_Space, Memento Obliviscere, was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards 2018.

Her work has been exhibited in galleries internationally, including the Japan Society (New York), Osage Gallery (Hong Kong and Singapore), Ikkan Art Gallery (Singapore), Valentine Willie Fine Arts (Kuala Lumpur and Manila), Silverlens (Manila), Finale Gallery (Manila), MO_Space (Manila), and Green Papaya Art Projects (Manila). She has also shown her work in institutions including the Cultural Center of the Philippines, National Museum of the Philippines, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila, the Musee d'Art Moderne in St. Etienne, Kyoto Art Center, Hangaram Museum, EuGon Museum of Photography, Triennale di Milano Design Museum, Queens Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Tate Modern.

Jonathan Ching (b. 1969, Dagupan, Philippines) obtained his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering in 1991 before becoming a visual artist. He pursued his artistic interests in 1993 and took up University of the Philippines’ College of Fine Arts – Visual Communication program. 

He is one of the founding members of the arts collective Surrounded By Water, which successfully established an artist-run space from 1998 to 2004. Ching has exhibited extensively since his first solo exhibition in 2008 at West Gallery. His works were shown in several solo and group exhibitions in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Mariano Ching (b. 1971) graduated from the Fine Arts Program of University of the Philippines (UP) and studied at the Kyoto Arts University, Japan as a Research Student, Major in Printmaking. He has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at various galleries and institutions worldwide, such as the Singapore Art Museum, Valentine Willie Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur, Art Taipei, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Owen James Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, the Voice Gallery, Kyoto, Silverlens Manila and Singapore, as well as Finale Art File, among others.

Lena Cobangbang (b. 1976, Philippines) studied Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines in Diliman QC. Her work is broad-ranging, moving across video, installation, and found objects to embroidery, cookery, performance and photography. Integral to her art practice is doing collaborations with other artists, such as with Yasmin Sison under the created fictional identity as Alice and Lucinda; and with Mike Crisostomo as The Weather Bureau.

Apart from making art, she writes and works as an independent curator. A part of the seminal artist collective Surrounded By Water, her art practice extends to doing art administration and exhibit organizing, having been a fellow at the 2008 HAO Summit for emerging artists, curator and art managers in Asia in Singapore in 2008, and having undergone an artist/curator research residency exchange between Green Papaya Art Projects and Pekarna-Magdalenske Mreže in Maribor, Slovenia in 2010. She was also part of the touring exhibit, Bastards of Misrepresentation, curated by Manuel Ocampo which has been held in Berlin, Hamburg, Bangkok and New York and the Manila Vice show in Sète, France.

In 2005, she was nominated for the 3rd Ateneo Art Awards. She received the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 2006, and was one of the participating artists in the 2008 Singapore Biennale. She did curatorial projects for galleries Pablo, Post Gallery, Galerie Anna, Galerie Roberto, Art Anton, and Secret Fresh in Manila, Philippines. She was part of a residency program hosted by Langgeng Art Foundation in Jogjakarta in 2016.

Painter and sculptor Louie Cordero began an active exhibiting career while pursuing his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines. After graduating in 2001, he became a core member of the painting collective Surrounded by Water and artist-in-residence with the artist-run initiative Big Sky Mind. His work explored imagery and narratives at the nexus of Philippine Catholicism, politics, mass culture, mining the collective consciousness of the Pinoy everyman with a humorous edge. He won the Grand Prize (Painting), 8th Annual Freeman Foundation Vermont Studio Centre in 2002-3. In 2005, he co-founded Future Prospects alternative art space. He is the creator of Nardong Tae, the underground comics of cult status in the Philippines.

Fascinated with kitschy outsider aesthetics and colonial-era leftovers, acrylic has become Cordero's medium of choice in painting since 2005 as he turned towards the super-flat aesthetics of spray-painted Philippine jeepneys and other waning commercial art forms. He received the Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artists Awards in 2006 and earlier. Solo exhibitions overseas include DELUBYO (Giant Robot, Los Angeles, 2008), Actuality/Virtuality (3 Sogoku Warehouse, Fukuoka, 2003), Soft Death (Osage, Hong Kong and Singapore, 2009) and Sacred Bones (Jonathan Levine Gallery, New York, 2010). The recent years display an intensity in the bricolage-method of image construction that takes us through a thrill ride through unbridled imaginations and rerouted libidos, coupled with awkward rendering and visionary courage. His work has been included in World of Painting, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Australia, 2008; Coffee, Cigarettes and Pad Thai, Eslite Gallery, Taipei, 2008; Singapore Biennale 2011; the 14th Jakarta Biennale, 2011; and PANORAMA, Singapore Art Museum, 2012.

Cordero’s puzzling, imploring, and visually striking juxtapositions are often punctuated by blood and gore, as if to imply the history of violence and bloodshed that his nation and people have sustained. Cordero’s artwork makes references to his native Philippines, a nation rich with diversity—the result of multiple changes in political regime and subjugation throughout its history. With a complex mixture of eastern and western influences, the cultural fabric of The Republic of The Philippines is a unique combination of ethnic heritage and traditions, composed of indigenous folklore, Asian customs and Spanish legacy reflective in the names and religion.

Figures from Filipino mythology and its strong oral tradition are referenced through the artist’s gruesome monsters and zombies, while another source of inspiration derived from his nationality involves the Jeepney (U.S. military vehicles abandoned after WWII, and converted by locals to use as public transportation). Each Jeepney, unique and elaborately decorated in vibrant colors, features an ornate mash-up of pop and religious iconography. By combining these elements, varied and obscure (to Westerners), with imagery appropriated from Cordero’s assorted interests including kitsch, Indian advertising, cult American b-movies, and pulp horror, the contrasting influences reflect the complex diversity of the artist’s heritage itself.

Born in 1975 in Metro Manila, Mike Crisostomo is a visual artist who was admitted to the University of the Philippines Diliman’s Fine Arts program in 1998.

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He had his solo exhibition entitled Picture Not So Perfect at Blanc Gallery, Quezon City and he joined various group exhibitions at Finale Art File, MO_Space, National Museum, and at the Goliath Visual Space in Brooklyn, New York.

Kiri Lluch Dalena (b. 1975) is a Filipino filmmaker and visual artist. Dalena graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) Los Baños with a Bachelors in Human Ecology. She then pursued further studies in 16mm documentary film making at the Mowelfund Film Institute. She is a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (2012) and the Ateneo Art Awards (2009). Dalena’s films have been screened in various international film festivals such as the Tromsø International Film Festival (2015), Visions du Reel (2014), Naqsh Short Film Festival (2014), and in the Sharjah Biennale 11 Film Program (2013). She has represented the Philippines in different international art events such as the Singapore Biennale (2013), the Yokohama Triennale (2014), the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (2014), the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia (2015), and Busan Biennale (2016). Dalena’s works are currently in the permanent collections of the Singapore Art Museum, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, and the Ateneo Art Gallery. She has various solo and group exhibitions in local and international galleries, such as Mag:net, Vargas Museum at UP, Finale Art File, 1335Mabini, Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill in Graz, Austria, Ateneo Art Gallery, Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Now Gallery, Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila Contemporary, the Lopez Memorial Museum, and the Singapore Art Museum.

Neil Daza (b. 1961, Paranaque, Metro Manila) grew up visiting his father, a former military colonel who was taken as a political prisoner, in Fort Bonifacio during the Marcos regime.

Daza, who belonged to a family of activists, took to photography and painting to engage with the volatile conditions of the period. Influenced by Jess Abrera and other social realists, he first pursued Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas, but quickly traded the brush for the camera when he was given an opportunity to shoot for publications Malaya, Midday and WeForum.

However, his career in photojournalism (1986-1989) was cut short by an accident while covering the New People’s Army in the Cordilleras. His injury, which evolved into a slipped disc, prevented his return to the field.

After his recovery, he enrolled in film production workshops at the Mowelfund Film Institute and at PETA from 1991-1995. It was in this period where he would meet fellow filmmakers Avic Ilagan, Ricky Orellana, Robert Quebral, and Ellen Ramos, with whom he formed the collective Blacksoup Project. Renting a space for their first office in Marikina Shoe Expo, Cubao, they worked on the second floor and used the first floor as an exhibition space for photography. Daza served as its head curator, staging shows such as “Kambyo”, an exhibition of cellphone images, and “Detritus,” crime photographs from the archives of the tabloid, People’s Tonite (1987-2002). The latter was shown under a new title, “Nil” in 2018 at Artinformal gallery, due to the insistence of his co-curator Erwin Romulo who believed it a timely response to the extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration.

Already an accomplished cinematographer, in 2017, Daza held a solo exhibition of photographs at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. “Neil Daza 25 Times, Images from Behind the Camera” covers 25 years of documenting theater, cinema, and television.

Bembol dela Cruz (b. 1976) has been publicly exhibiting his photo realistic paintings since 2000, increasingly engaging the concept of tattoos and other objects as surface, skin and sign. He studied Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines Diliman from 1998 to 2002.

His first solo exhibition, The History of Things, was shown in 2006 and has been followed by successive one-man shows ever since like Handmade Violence (Manila) at Finale Art File and Markings 1:16 at Richard Koh Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He also had various group exhibitions such as Lost In The Crowd: Contemporary Figuration at Manila Contemporary, Tones of Home at Blanc Gallery, and I love Painting and Painting loves me at Finale Art File.

In 2011, Dela Cruz bagged one of the top three slots at the 8th Ateneo Art Awards and received an artist residency and exhibition grant at the Liverpool Hope University and the Cornerstone Gallery in the United Kingdom. The following year, he received two other residency grants from the Berkshire Residency Exchange in West Massachusetts and the Art OMI International Artists Residency in Ghent, New York.

Pardo de Leon’s paintings are reminiscent of the style of the old European Masters, and she is known for her distinctive style of painting marked by a ‘sense of line, gesture, and touch.’ Belonging to a generation of painters whose works are mainly based on found photographic imagery, de Leon approaches painting both intuitively and methodically. Working adeptly in both abstraction and figuration, she confronts conventions in painting through the juxtaposition of images, the layering of different forms and motifs, or by zooming in on particular aspects and details of the subject.

Pardo de Leon graduated with a degree in Painting from the UP College of Fine Arts in 1987. She was a recipient of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award in 1988. She also received a studio residency grant from the Italian-Swedish Cultural Foundation in Venice, Italy in 1999, which was awarded the best show of the year by the state council. De Leon has had numerous solo and group exhibitions at various galleries and museums including the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Finale Art File, MO_Space, Blanc Gallery, Manila Contemporary, Valentine Willie Fine Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art – La Salle College of the Arts. She currently lives and works in Baguio City.

Ranelle Dial (b. 1977) is a visual artist and freelance art instructor. Her work continually transitions between various materials, processes and conceptual concerns, all linked by the production of multiple or serial works.

Dial graduated from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, majoring in Visual Communication in 2003. She started joining group exhibitions in 2005 and held her first solo exhibition, titled Cube Uncubed, a year after at Mag:net Gallery. Her 6th solo exhibition, titled Redefined Signals, was held at Finale Art File in 2009.

She continues to hold annual or bi-annual solo exhibits to date and has completed artist residencies at the Project Space Pilipinas in Manila (2011) and Liverpool Hope University in the United Kingdom (2012).

Jed Escueta graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of the Philippines. He was part of the Green Papaya Art Projects Residency Program Wednesdays Open Platform funded by Arts Network Asia Singapore in 2009. Escueta has participated in both solo and group exhibitions at Silverlens Gallery, Light and Space Contemporary, Osage Gallery in Hong Kong, Green Papaya Art Projects, Post Gallery, Photo Bangkok, Vinyl on Vinyl, and Art Dubai.

Patricia Perez Eustaquio (b. 1977) is based in Manila who works with shadows, fragments, discards, and detritus, taking on such marginalized themes in a language that is at once evocative and familiar. She works in a variety of media, exploring materials through painting, drawing, and installation. She fashions sculpture from fabric, shrouding objects with crochet or silk treated with resin and then removes the object allowing the fabric to retain the folds and drapes. The resulting ghost (-piano, -chair, -birdcage) examines ideas of memory and perception.

Her similar approach to painting translates the rigid pictorial square to a fragmented object, where its bounding frame is removed or cut away, resulting into ornately shaped canvases haunted by imagery of discards and detritus, wilted blooms and carcasses.

Eustaquio’s work recalls the domestic as well as perhaps the psychic lives of objects by the repeated rehashing of memory where the familiar or the banal takes on a new substance, where the material and the immaterial coexist. She has been the recipient of awards for emerging artists, and of artists’ residency grants such as Art Omi in New York. She has had solo shows in Manila, Taiwan, Singapore, and New York, and has been part of several, notable group exhibitions including shows at the Hong Kong Art Centre (HKAC) and the Singapore Art Museum.  Her work recently featured in The Vexed Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art & Design in Manila.

In 2016, she was commissioned to work on a site-specific installation at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The exhibit ran from 23 June to 22 September.

Nona Garcia (b. 1978) received a BFA in Painting at the University of the Philippines (UP). Her work has been shown and collected extensively throughout the region. She was the recipient of the Grand Prize for the Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Award (2000), the Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists Award (2003), and the residency program at Cross Currents, Bangkok (2004). Her work has been featured in numerous publications such as Post-Tsunami Art published by Damiani, Without Walls: A tour of Philippine Paintings at the Turn of the Millenium, and Phaidon’s Painting Today.

Garcia has shown at Finale Art File, West Gallery, the Prague Biennale (2009), G23 in Bangkok, the Primo Marella Milano, Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore, Osage Gallery Singapore, the Bencab Museum in Baguio City, ARNDT Berlin, and Blanc Gallery, to name a few.

Rico Maria Ilarde (son of Philippine TV and radio personality, Eddie Ilarde) was born and bred in Metro Manila; early education in De La Salle, in Greenhills; majored in Film at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California; spent the summer at the USC / Universal Studios film program.

He has worked as an independent filmmaker in one sense—he has directed at least three features (his first, and his two latest) without the resources of a mainstream Filipino film studio behind him. Ilarde started out a problematic figure—unique in that he had the resources and determination to write and direct his own feature film, same time said film, free to express everything about anything, did little more than express his love for and desire to emulate ’70s and ’80s Hollywood action pictures. Afterwards, he entered a period of what one might call indentured servitude, producing two genre horror features for Lily Monteverde’s Regal Films.
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A filmmaker evolves, his art evolves, and Ilarde with his hard-won experience in both independent and studio filmmaking finally broke free from the limitations of both with digital filmmaking—finally found himself, in effect, thanks to the digicam. Sa Ilalim ng Cogon follows Bordwell’s definition of the art cinema in several important respects—heightened realism (less extravagant fight sequences or gore), greater ambiguity (Ilarde using silence and ambient sound to create a sense of mystery), a personalised protagonist (Sam is a closer approximation of the director than his more gregarious, outwardly ‘mestizo’ forebears).

Robert Langenegger (b. 1983, St. Gallen, Switzerland) lives and works in Manila, Philippines. His art has deliberately gone against moral conformity and academic technique, using images as carnivalesque allegory.

Taking up Fine Arts at UP Diliman and Kalayaan College, Langenegger first exhibited his paintings at the artist-run space Big Sky Mind in 2003. By 2008, he was cited as one of the finalists for the Sovereign Art Prize. During that same year his one-man show Irish Bull of the Mother and Child, held at Finale Art File in 2007, was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards. Soon after, his show at MO_Space, ONLY DOG CAN JUDGE ME, was also shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards in 2018. His works have been shown in various art galleries in Manila, Malaysia, Australia, Austria, Germany and New York. Through the years, he had various solo exhibitions in both local and international galleries such as Finale Art File in the Philippines and Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill in Graz, Austria. He participated in group exhibitions as well that showed at Artesan Gallery (Singapore) and Goliath Visual Space in Brooklyn (New York), to name some.

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Isa Lorenzo, educated in Manila and New York City, is the founder of Silverlens Galleries (2004). As gallerist, she is instrumental in establishing photography as a collected medium in the region, and continuously raising the bar for strongly curated contemporary art exhibitions. She sits on the board of the Museum Foundation of the Philippines, and acts as adviser to prominent private collections. As an artist, she has shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the UNESCO House in Paris, and at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Metropolitan Museum in Manila. Her pieces are in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Collection (Manila), the Mikey and Lou Samson Collection (Singapore), the Ropke Collection (Cologne). She is the recipient of the Jenesys Grant of the Japan Foundation at Tokyo Wonder Site and the Berlin Arts Program of the Goethe Institut.

At Maculangan (b. 1965) is among the most sought-after photographers in the Philippines. He graduated with a degree in Painting from the Fine Arts Program of the University of Santo Tomas. He began exploring mixed media work and working with found objects. After graduation, he decided to study film. At 20, he moved to Italy and lived there for 15 years before returning to the Philippines. Maculangan is the founder of Lomomanila, a group for amateur and professional photographers who share an interest in lomography (a photography art movement). 

He has mounted several solo and two-man exhibitions featuring his photography in galleries like Finale Art File (2013) and Silverlens (2012) in Makati, Philippines; Valentine Willie in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2011); Novara in Italy (2002). He has also been part of several group exhibitions like The Philippine International Visual Art Fest, Shangri-La Mall (2010); Without a Murmur, Museum of Contemporary Design, Manila (2012); and Adobo Country, Taksu, Singapore (2013). His work was also exhibited at Art Fair Philippines in 2016. 

Maculangan has been involved with the documentation of art shows and art projects by several artists, and has garnered the distinction as one of the most seasoned photographers of paintings and other works of fine art. He has continued to remain active with the documentation of artworks and other cultural events through a photography and print gallery he co-founded, the Pioneer Studios in Mandaluyong.

Pow Martinez (b. 1983, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Manila) is a Filipino artist known for his expressionistic style of painting, blending bold colors with demonic, mutant-like characters to create compelling canvases. Often resembling a beautiful nightmare, Martinez combines the mundanities of everyday life with elements of pop culture, resulting in darkly humorous works depicting society’s overconsumption.

Martinez is a recipient of the 2010 Ateneo Art Award for his exhibition 1 Billion Years at West Gallery, Philippines. He exhibits internationally and has worked with different media, from painting to sound.

His recent exhibitions include State of Flux (2023) at Silverlens New York; City Prince/sses (2019) at Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Art Jakarta 2019 with Silverlens and ROH Projects; 50 Years in Hollywood (2019) at Pinto Art Museum in New York; Art Basel Hong Kong 2019 with Silverlens; WXXX (2019), West Gallery, Manila. Martinez has also held a number of solo shows in major galleries in Manila, the most recent of which is Clunker (2022) at Silverlens Manila. Early in 2022,Martinez had his first solo exhibition in Madrid entitled Underground SpiritualUnit at Galeria Yusto/ Giner. In 2018, he had a solo exhibition in Indonesia. Titled Aesthetic Police, the exhibition is an outcome of his month-long residency program at OPQRStudio in Bandung.

Paul Mondok (b. 1978) graduated with a Bachelor degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He has been exhibiting since 1998 in alternative art spaces such as in Big Sky Mind, Future Prospects, and Green Papaya Art Projects, and other exhibition spaces that ponder contemporary art practice and formats. He has also participated in both solo and group shows at various galleries and institutions, such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the National Museum, Osage Gallery Hong Kong, the Philippine Center in New York, among others. He was the Philippine representative for the Jakarta Biennale (2013) and 98B COLLABoratory’s representative to the Koganecho Bazaar (2014) in Japan.

Kaloy Olavides graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) with a Bachelor degree of Fine Arts. Aside from his visual arts practice, he has been doing production design for films, music videos, and audio visual presentations. He is the guitar and vocals for the bands Pastilan Dong! and Grows, and is also a member of the experimental sound collective, Elemento. Since 2012, Olavides has been teaching at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde. He is a recipient of the Philippine Art Awards Juror’s Choice Award of Merit (2013), and the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (2012). He has had solo exhibitions at several galleries including Green Papaya Art Projects, West Gallery, 856 G Gallery, and Light and Space Contemporary. He has also shown in group exhibitions at Osage Gallery Hong Kong, Osage Gallery Singapore, the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, California, the Central Trak Gallery in Texas, Silverlens Gallery and Post Gallery.

Jonathan Olazo (b. 1969, Manila) graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, where he now teaches. He is a recipient of the Grand Prize from the Philippine Association of Printmakers Open Graphic Arts Competition and Exhibition (1987), the Thirteen Artists Awards by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (1994), the Voted Artist of the Year with Roy Halili for Art Manila Newspaper Art Awards (2003), and an artist residency in Fukuoka, Japan by an independent curator, Mizuki Endo (2004). Olazo has had solo and group exhibitions both in local and international spaces, including the Tetra Art Space, Valentine Willie Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur, Manila Contemporary, Now Gallery, the Vargas Museum at UP, the Drawing Room, and Paseo Gallery.

Jayson Oliveria (b. 1973) graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at the University of the Philippines. He is a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Award (2006), and Ateneo Art Award (2004), and artist residencies at Big Sky Mind Artists Projects Foundation in Cubao (2003–2004) and at Tetra Art Space in Fukuoka, Japan (2005). Oliveria has shown widely in both local and international galleries, including Surrounded by Water, The Drawing Room, Finale Art File, Ark Galerie in Jakarta, the Tate Turbine Hall in London, Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill in Austria, Artinformal, and Freies Museum Berlin, and VOLTA12 in Markthalle, Basel.

Mawen Ong (b. 1964) is an artist and gallery director in Manila. She is a member of King Kong Art Projects Unlimited, an initiative dedicated to archiving and preserving the works of Roberto Chabet. She obtained 2 business degrees at St. Scholastica’s College and eventually studied Painting at the University of the Philippines - College of Fine Arts. She has been exhibiting since 2005 in both solo and group exhibitions at Future Prospects, Green Papaya Art Projects, West Gallery, Osage Gallery Hong Kong, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Blanc Gallery, and Silverlens Manila, among others.

Bernardo Pacquing (b. 1967, Tarlac) currently lives in Parañaque City. He studied Editorial Design from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. In 1999, he won the Grand Prize from the Art Association of the Philippines for an Open Art Competition (Painting Non-Representational), and was a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Award in 2000. In the same year, he was also given the Freeman Fellowship Grant at Vermont Studio Center in Vermont. Pacquing has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at various local and international venues such as Manila Contemporary, La Salle College of the Arts in Singapore, Osage Gallery Hong Kong, TAKSU Singapore, and Silverlens Gallery.

Jet Pascua (b. 1969) is born in Manila, The Philippines. He studied painting at the Fine Arts Department of the University of the Philippines, and later studied Visual Arts at the Royal Academy of the Arts in Oslo, and finished his Master in Fine Arts degree at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen. 

He works in performance and film, as well as objects and drawing, and his work often reflects upon his own experiences as an immigrant coming from the Philippines to Norway. While often personal, his art also commonly involves historical and political events. 

Pascua is currently a fellow at the Norwegian Artistic Research Program, Tromsø Academy for Contemporary Art. He is the founder and programme director of Small Projects, an artist-run space he started in Manila and currently located in Tromsø. Jet lives in Tromsø, Norway and works in Tromsø and Manila.

Gary-Ross Pastrana (b. 1977, Manila) received his Bachelor’s Degree in Painting from the University of the Philippines where he was a recipient of the Dominador Castañeda Award for Best Thesis. He was granted residency programs in Japan and Bangkok. Pastrana was awarded residencies in Japan and Bangkok, and received the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2006). He is one of the co-founders of Future Prospects Art Space (2005–2007), and has exhibited his work and curated shows both in his hometown and abroad, at galleries like Silverlens Singapore, Finale Art File, the Singapore Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of the Philippines, the Vargas Museum at the University of the Philippines, and has participated in Art Basel Hong Kong (2013), the New Museum Triennale in New York, USA (2012), the Aichi Triennale in Japan (2010) and the Busan Biennale in Korea (2008). Pastrana has also authored publications such as New Museum Triennial: The Ungovernables (USA) and Tomorrow, Today: Contemporary Art from the Singapore Art Museum 2009–2011, both published in 2012.

Norberto Roldan (b. 1953, Roxas City) is a multimedia artist. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the St. Pius X Seminary, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communications from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, and a Masters in Art studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Roldan is currently the artistic director of Green Papaya Art Projects, an alternative multidisciplinary platform which he co-founded in 2000. 

He has represented the Philippines in various international exhibitions in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the USA. He was represented in three landmark surveys of Southeast Asian contemporary art, including New Art from Southeast Asia by the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (1992), Negotiating Home History and Nation: Two Decades of Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia 1991–2011 by the Singapore Art Museum and most recently, No Country: Contemporary Art For South / Southeast Asia by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2013). His works are included in collections worldwide, such as those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, the Singapore Art Museum, the Deutsche Bank, the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the San Miguel Corporation, the Ateneo Art Gallery, the Bencab Museum, the Carlos Oppen Cojuangco Foundation, the Artour Holdings Singapore, to name a few.

Brian Sergio (b. 1980) is a Photographer, Painter, and Graphic Designer. He studied painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in 2002. Trained as a painter and a conceptual artist, he had a few local group exhibitions between 2000 to 2008 and worked as a Graphic Designer and Art Director in a couple of advertising firms, before deciding to focus on Photography full-time. His solo exhibitions as a photographer includes ‘Pak!’ (2014) at Galerie Astra, in Makati and ‘Kidultery’ (2011) at West Gallery in Quezon City, Philippines.

Sergio's work has often been described as raw, transgressive, and irreverent. His method has always been about energy and movement; taking a gamble, getting involved, and going with the flow without diffidence.

In 2017, he released his 1st book called "Pak" published by Dienacht Publishing. The book was based on a collective rebellion against inhibitions and acceptable behavior, an attempt to expose the world behind the façade that most Filipinos aspire to.

Sergio currently lives and works in Manila, Philippines.

Soler Santos (b. 1960) attended the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts from 1978-82. He is a painter and photographer. Santos founded West Gallery with his wife and fellow artist, Mona Santos, in 1989.

Santos has represented the Philippines in international events such as the 1st ASEAN Youth Painting and Workshop in Thailand (1983), the 2nd Asian Art Show in Japan (1985), and the 11th International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2004). He is the recipient of the First Prize from the ASEAN Painting Competition (1983) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (1992).

Santos has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at spaces including the Luz Gallery, Blanc Gallery, Silverlens Galleries, Finale Art File, MO_Space, Artinformal, the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the ICA La Salle College of the Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Gerardo Tan (b. 1960) works across various media from painting, collage, artist books to video, found objects, and installation to deal with conceptual plays and issues of representation. He recreates images culled from the world of art and mass media in order to subvert hierarchies and give way to new itinerant meanings.

Tan took his BFA at the University of the Philippines and his MFA at the State University of New York in Buffalo, USA. He has participated in several international exhibitions including Pause (4th Gwangju Biennial, 2002), Signs of Life (First Melbourne Biennial, 1999), The 3rd Asian Art Biennial Bangladesh (Osmani Memorial Hall, Dhaka, 1986), and The 2nd Asian Art Show (Fukuoka Art Museum, 1982). His recent solo exhibitions are Points of Departure (Noestudio, 2013 Madrid, Spain), Hablon Redux and Other Transcriptions (Random Parts, Oakland, USA, 2016) and Visualizing Sound (Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Philippines, 2019).

He was conferred the 13 Artists Award by the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1988. His other distinctions include the Fulbright-Hays Grant at SUNY Buffalo (1990-92), the Barbara Schuller’s Art Associates Award in Buffalo, NY (1992) and the Juror’s Choice at the Art Association of the Philippines Annual Competition in 1997.

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MM Yu (b. 1978) lives and works in Manila, Philippines. Her photographs evoke the ever-changing cultural texture and topology of Manila as seen through its inhabitants, the city’s infrastructure and its waste product as it archives not only the economy but also the ecology of life in the myriad forms it takes in the city. 

These recorded static scenarios show through their thematic variety the artist’s interest in discovering and valuing the fleeting moment present even in its simplest components. The diverse elements in her works not only underscore the inability of photography to account for fractured temporality. Through her ongoing interest in deciphering the enigma of the unseen landscape of ordinary things, they also force us to rethink what our minds already know and rediscover what our eyes have already seen.

The impact lies in how photography is employed to investigate another subject namely that of memory. By consolidating a series of routine snapshots traversing the streets of Manila. The hybrid and density of MM Yu’s subjects remind us of how objects and signs are not necessarily self-contained but take part in larger systems of interaction.

MM Yu received her BFA Painting from the University of the Philippines and completed residencies with Big Sky Mind, Manila (2003), Common Room Bandung Residency Grant and Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France (2013). She is a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artist Award (2009), the Goethe Institute Workshop Grant (2014), and the Ateneo Art Awards (winner in 2007, shortlisted in 2011). She was also a finalist for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2010).

Alvin Zafra (b. 1978) graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts, Major in Painting from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. He was a transferee from the University of Santo Tomas College of Architecture and Fine Arts, Major in Painting. Alvin Zafra received the best thesis award, Dominador Castañeda Award for Visual Essay, in 2000 for his work entitled “Argument from Nowhere.” In 2015, he won the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Also, he was one of the shortlisted artists for the BMW Art Journey 2016. He has joined group exhibitions shown at ESLITE Gallery in Taipei, Osage Hong Kong and Singapore, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Zafra also works as Production Designer and Art Director for indie films, music videos, and television. 

Roberto Chabet (1937–2013) was a pioneering Filipino conceptual artist, curator, and teacher. Known for his experimental works, ranging from paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, and installations made out of mostly ordinary and found material, Chabet insists on a more inclusive approach to art. In his works, abstraction and the everyday collide, creating spaces for new meanings.

Chabet was the founding Museum Director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) where he initiated the Thirteen Artists Awards in 1970 to support young artists whose works show “recentness and a turning away from the past.” After his brief tenure at the CCP, he led the alternative artist group Shop 6, and taught for over thirty years at the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts and at key artist-run spaces in Manila. Since the 70s until his death in 2013, he supported and curated exhibitions of young Filipino artists.

Chabet is the recipient of the JD Rockefeller III Fund Grant (1967–1968), the Republic Cultural Heritage Award (1972), the Araw ng Maynila Award for the Visual Arts (1972), and the CCP Centennial Award of Honours for the Arts (1998). He was posthumously awarded the Gawad CCP Para Sa Sining in 2015.