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.

Agnes Arellano (b. 1949, San Juan, Rizal) was born to a life of ease in the quiet and genteel district of Pinaglabanan in San Juan del Monte. She belonged to a prominent family of architects that included her father Otilio (b. 1916), her grandfather Arcadio, and grand-uncle Juan. Best known for surrealist and expressionist work in plaster (cast and directly modelled), bronze, and cold-cast marble, Arellano's work tends to stress the integration of individual elements into one totality or "inscape". She studied psychology at the University of the Philippines where she graduated in 1971 and later enrolled in a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology at the Ateneo de Manila. She graduated in 1976 with the Cours de langue et civilisation françaises (degré supérieure) at the Université de la Sorbonne, and later on went back to the Philippines and chose to major in sculpture under the guidance of Napoleon “Billy” Abueva, pioneering modernist in sculpture and National Artist.

Possibly one of her most innovative uses of materials was the installation “Antropy” (a play on the words “entropy” and “ant”) for a group show in 1984. This was a black-ant colony designed in mixed media of white crushed marble on top of garden soil with corals and stones to mark various spaces. For three months the ants re-organized their environment, and their tunnel workings could be observed through the clear walls of an acrylic cube.

Agnes also acknowledges the influence of Chabet (Roberto Chabet Rodriguez) in the spirit of conceptual art, the semiotic use of materials, the shedding of artistic inhibitions, the witty and mischievous aspects of art, the spirit of freedom in exploring ideas, and the use of a wide range of cultural sources. Equipped with the necessary training, approaches, and inspirations, she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1983.

Arellano has participated in international group exhibitions in Berlin, Fukuoka, Havana, Johannesburg, New York, Brisbane and Singapore. Her works are in the permanent collection of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, the Singapore Art Museum, and the APEC Sculpture Park by the Naru River, Busan South Korea.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

Lara de los Reyes (b. 1980) currently lives and works in the Philippines. She graduated from the University of the Philippines with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, and from Assumption College with a Bachelor of Science in Commerce and Entrepreneurship. De los Reyes has participated in solo and group exhibitions at various galleries including Richard Koh Fine Arts, Malaysia, Green Papaya Art Projects, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Mag:net Gallery, and Silverlens Gallery.

Nilo Ilarde (b. 1960) is a conceptual artist and curator whose works navigate the intersections between image and word, drawing and writing, and surface and painting. Using both found and constructed objects, he assembles amalgams of image and text that  comment on both the formal and conceptual conditions of art and language. He strips and mines his subjects to reveal their history and materiality and in the process creates forms of both declaration and negation. 

Ilarde studied Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. Since the 80s, he has been exhibiting his works and curating exhibitions at various galleries and alternative spaces in Manila, including the Cultural Center of the Philippines, The Pinaglabanan Galleries, Finale Art File, West Gallery, Mag;net, MO_Space, Art Informal, and Underground. His works have also been featured in several international exhibitions and art fairs including solo presentations at Art Basel Hong Kong and Art Stage Singapore, both in 2015 and at Art Fair Philippines in 2018.  He is also the co-founder of King Kong Art Projects Unlimited and was one of the lead curators of ‘Chabet: 50 Years’ in various venues in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Manila from 2011–2012.

Geraldine Javier (b. 1970, Philippines) lives and work in the Philippines. Javier has held many solo and group exhibitions in her home country since 1995, and since 2004, she has been exhibiting her works internationally. She is recognized as one of the most celebrated Southeast Asian artists both in the academic and art fields. Her works revolve around the universal world of spirituality rather than concentrating on a specific religion. Javier’s interests root from the artist’s personal history of having lived her whole life struggling with the catholic culture in the Philippines, and are manifested through the unique region-specificity of Southeast Asia, in which the influx of Western culture has been naturalized. In other words, Javier goes beyond the logic behind religion, to pursue fundamental values that can be collectively embraced.

Javier was one of the artists who received the Thirteen Artists Award of Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2003.

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.

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.

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.

Stanley Ruiz is an industrial designer and principal of Estudio Ruiz Design Consultancy – a design studio specializing in the development of products for the furniture, lighting, and home furnishings sector.

With an extensive background in craft design and production, his work explores the commonplace to bring about new meaning and interpretation to object archetypes. Born and raised in Manila, and for several years lived in Bali and New York – Stanley’s work is an amalgam of influences held together by his singular, rational approach to product design.

His works have appeared at the Museum of Arts and Design and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. He has exhibited at the Salone Del Mobile in Milan, International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, Maison & Objet in Paris and Singapore, Ambiente in Frankfurt, Bangkok International Gift Fair, Philippine International Furniture Show, and Manila FAME.

Stanley has been featured in a number of books, magazines, and newspapers, and received several accolades including two Katha awards, Rising Asian Talent award at Maison & Objet, Outstanding Asian Talent in Bangkok, and received the Coup De Coeur award at Maison & Objet in Paris in 2008, and Surface magazine named him one of the Avant Guardians of 2010.

Recent projects include furniture design for Areté and the Ateneo Art Gallery, sculptural pieces for Conrad Hotel Manila, collaboration with glass makers in the Czech Republic, and creative direction for the Philippine delegation at NY NOW – the biggest design show in the US.

He is currently a consultant for the Design Center of the Philippines, and the creative director in-charge for DTI’s Go Lokal! He is a faculty at SoFA Design Institute, and at the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines Diliman.

Gerardo Tan, also known as Gerry Tan, is a visual artist, curator, and art educator. He finished Bachelor of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman College of Fine Arts (CFA) in 1982 and Masters of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1992 as a Fulbright Fellow. He was a professorial lecturer at UP CFA from 1993 to 2000 and the former dean of the University of the East College of Fine Arts from 2002 to 2005. Tan was awarded the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 1988.

As a conceptual artist, Tan explores the nature of art and how forms and materiality can be articulated in ideas and concepts, be it through painting, sculpture, found objects, artists books, or installations. Often referencing and revisiting his earlier work, Tan deals with aesthetic questions related to the reproducibility of images and the spatial and temporal authenticity of a work.

Tan has exhibited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and Lopez Museum, among many more institutions in the Philippines. He has participated in several international exhibitions such as the 2nd Asian Art Show in Fukuoka Museum, 1982, the 1st Melbourne Biennale,1999, the 4th Gwangju Biennale, 2002, and the inaugural exhibition of The National Gallery of Singapore, 2016. He continues to work with contemporary artists making up the Bastards of Misrepresentation that is curated by Manuel Ocampo, which has aggressively and independently been exhibiting since 2010 in Berlin, Germany, Queens New York, and Sete, France.

In 2022, his work was featured at the Philippine Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale entitled Milk of Dreams, curated by Yael Buencamino and Arvin Flores.

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).

Reg Yuson is a sculptor and creative director of Spacespecific. He was a former member of the Committee on Visual Arts, from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (1996–2001), and the Society of Philippine Sculptors (1993–1998). He received the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Award in 2003.

Yuson has made commissioned pieces in public spaces, including the University of the Philippines (UP) Sculpture Garden, Greenbelt 3 in Makati City, the Mind Museum and in Bonifacio High Street, Taguig City, Resorts World Genting Club, and the Manila Hotel. He has exhibited in both solo and group shows at galleries and institutions such as the UP Vargas Museum, West Gallery, Pinto Art Gallery, Finale Art File, Mag:net Gallery, ART FORUM Gallery Singapore, Manila Contemporary, Galleria Duemila, and the Cultural Centre of the Philippines, among others.