Juan Alcazaren (b. 1960, Quezon City) graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Architecture with a Bachelor’s Degree in Landscape Architecture and took foundation courses in Sculpture from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. He is an animator and director at Alcazaren Bros. Production. His film, Vexations, won second prize at the Gawad CCP for Video from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (1996), and it was shown in several international film and video festivals. He is also a recipient of the Juror’s Choice award for Sculpture from the Art Association of the Philippines (1993) and the Thirteen Artists Award from the CCP (2000). Alcazaren has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at various galleries including Finale Art File, Utterly Art Singapore, Manila Contemporary, West Gallery, Museo Iloilo, Ayala Museum, Vargas Museum at UP, Big Sky Mind, Surrounded by Water, Pinto Gallery, Galleria Duemila, Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain, and the CCP.

Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan (b. 1965, Manila) and Alfredo Juan Aquilizan (b. 1962, Cagayan Valley, the Philippines) have lived and worked in Brisbane Australia since 2006. The artists have worked collaboratively for over a decade and their projects use the processes of collecting and collaborating to express ideas of migration, family, home, and memory. Often working with local communities, the Aquilizans bring together personal items and found objects to compose elaborate, formal installations reflecting individual experiences of dislocation and change. They have also used the materials of migration such as packing boxes, referencing the Philippine tradition of the Balikbayan. They have been selected for large exhibitions internationally, including the Havana Biennale (1997, 2000), the Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (1999 & 2009), 50th Venice Biennale (Zones of Urgency, 2003), Biennale of Sydney (2006); the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale in Japan (2006), Singapore Biennale (2008), Adelaide Biennial (2008); the Liverpool Biennal in the UK (2010), the 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and the Sharjah Biennale in the United Arab Emirates (2013), among others. They have also exhibited in numerous international institutions, such as the Singapore Art Museum, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) in Sydney, Australia, Asian Arts Museum in Fukuoka, Japan, the 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa, Japan, and more.

Victor Balanon (b. 1972, Manila) graduated from the University of the East with a degree in Dental Medicine and in Fine Arts, with a major in Advertising. A self-taught artist, he later pursued film and animation at the Mowelfund Film Institute in Manila, where he produced two short animated films. Balanon was part of the seminal art collective, Surrounded by Water. He has since participated in various solo and group shows at galleries such as Blanc Gallery, Silverlens Gallery, Secret Fresh Gallery, Lightbombs Contemporary in Hong Kong, Artesan Gallery in Singapore, Mind Set Art Center in Taipei, The Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, Finale Art File, Osage Gallery Hong Kong, Artinformal, House of Matahati in Malaysia, and Akibatamabi21, 3331 Arts Chiyoda in Japan, to name a few.

Annie Cabigting (b. 1971) studied painting at UP and graduated in 1994. She was a recipient of the 2005 Ateneo Art Awards and was part of the Prague Biennale 4 in 2009. Cabigting has had solo exhibitions in Finale Art File since 2005 and has participated in group shows at Richard Koh Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur, Vargas Museum, West Gallery and Primo Marella Gallery in Milan.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mark Justiniani (b. 1966, Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, Philippines) studied Arts Education at UP CFA. A one-time member of the Salingpusa group, he now spends as much time making vitrines, often playing with visual paradoxes and multiplications. Having spent some time living and working in USA, he now lives and works in Manila.

Romeo Lee is an artist and musician known as “the king of punk” and the “ukay-ukay king,” having gained a reputation since his student days in the University of the Philippines in the 1980s. An artist for over three decades, he has shown in both solo and group exhibitions in various spaces locally and internationally, including West Gallery, Manila Contemporary, Mag:net Gallery, NOVA Gallery, Vinyl on Vinyl, Finale Art File, Crucible Gallery, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Fries Museum in Berlin, and the Musee International des Arts Modestes in Sete, France.

Joy Mallari has exhibited extensively in the Philippines and the USA. Primarily a painter, she now often works with video. A children’s book (Doll Eyes) she illustrated has won awards. She lives and works in Manila.

Manuel Ocampo (b. 1965) is both an artist and curator. He studied at the University of the Philippines and at California State University in Bakersfield. Manuel Ocampo has received the Rome Prize in Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome (1995–1996), the National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Arts (1996), and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1995). In 2003, as he moved back to the Philippines, he co-founded the Department of Avant-Garde Clichés Gallery in Manila. Ocampo has curated exhibitions featuring Filipino artists at the Freies Museum Berlin, and the Musee International des Arts Modestes in France. He has also shown his own work at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, the Marie Kirkegaard Gallery in Copenhagen, Tyler Rollins Fine Art in New York, USA, Finale Art File, The Drawing Room, the Crucible Gallery, and Ateneo Art Gallery, to name a few. He has also participated in international art events such as Documenta IX (1992), and the Venice Biennale (1993, 2001, 2017). Ocampo’s works can be found in various museums, and public collections around the globe, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Oakland Museum in California, the Contemporary Museum in Hawaii, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan, and at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.

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.

Christina Quisumbing Ramilo (b. 1961) examines and reimagines objects and their contexts through comprehension of material and site specificity. Her artistic practice involves an interest in and respect for the life and history of objects. With minimal intervention on their surfaces, she arranges them or reconfigures their parts, presenting other perspectives to their forms and functions. Often using unconventional materials (construction discards, architectural fragments, casts, recycled paper), and utilizing objects themselves as material (mirrors, bottles, old frames, clothing), most of which have been collected for years, she constructs the works in parts over long periods of time, never completely finished. Conferred with titles that employ wit and humor, they ultimately express her personal poetries.

Ramilo lives and works in the Philippines as a full-time artist and curator.

It is with timelessness that Elaine Roberto-Navas (b. 1964) works her brush and palette over canvas. With subjects ranging from flowers to furniture, from the sky to water, she paints with oil in thick strokes; the object appears swathed in movement. Still life or landscape as they may be considered, they move with each glance, and if you stare, the motion starts to permeate outside the four corners of her paintings. What Roberto-Navas captures in her work is not merely an object in nature, but its spirit in movement, and together with her technique, artistry, and will, her paintings exist in a timelessness that might outlive us all, yet carry our humanity onwards.

Elaine Roberto-Navas graduated with BA in Psychology from Ateneo de Manila University (1985), and a Fine Arts degree, Major in Painting from the University of the Philippines (1991). Roberto-Navas has received various awards including the Jurors’ Choice Awards from the Art Association of the Philippines (1994, 1995), the Honorable Mention from the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards (1995), and the Honorable Mention from the Philip Morris Singapore Art Awards (2002). She has shown at the Ayala Museum, Silverlens Gallery, Finale Art File, MO_Space, Art Informal, West Gallery, UP Vargas Museum, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and Valentine Willie Fine Art in Singapore to name a few.

Juni Salvador (b. 1962) is a Filipino artist based in Sydney, Australia. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Advertising from the Philippine Women’s University College of Fine Arts. He taught at Maria Montessori Children’s School and at International School-Manila. He has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at various galleries including the Institute of Contemporary Art, La Salle Singapore, Manila Contemporary, SLOT space in Sydney, Mag:net Gallery, the Yuchengco Museum, Finale Art File, and West Gallery.

José Santos III (b. Manila, Philippines, 1970) lives and works in Pasig, Philippines. Santos has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore; The Armory Show, New York, USA; Vargas Museum, Quezon City, Philippines; The Drawing Room, Manila, Philippines; Artinformal, Mandaluyong, Philippines; A3 Arndt Art Agency, Berlin, Germany; Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong.  In 2000, he was one of the Thirteen Artist Awardees by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. His works have been exhibited in Malaysia, China, Bangladesh, Denmark, Berlin, Paris, New York, and London. Santos is the first Southeast Asian artist to have his work housed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.

Mona Santos (b. 1962), wife of Malang’s son Soler Santos, is among the Philippines’ premiere contemporary artists. Notable for her depictions of luscious flora in close, intimate proximity, which combine rigor of hand, with a feminine sensibility.

Santos’ mastery of the medium has in the past created an entire collection of floral paintings—technically adept and aesthetically delicate renderings that can instill a sense of wonder at the creations of nature. Her portrayals of blooms have long gone beyond the technically photorealistic. Instead, they capture the grace and luminosity of her floral subjects with sensual precision, in ways that not all photographs can.She documents not just a literal transition from one subject to another, but also merges two disparate images by consciously stripping the medium down to its barest essentials through lines. Such visual cues perhaps also hint at formal and stylistic transitions in Mona Santos’ process and repertoire of art-making.

Santos had various solo exhibitions in local galleries, and her works have been featured in various group shows and in publications such as 20th Century Filipino Artists, Homage to the Masters and 1+55: Perspective on Corporate Art Patronage among others.

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.

Yasmin Sison (b. 1972) graduated from the University of the Philippines, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Humanities and then in the Fine Arts, Major in Painting. She was a member of the collective Surrounded by Water, and is the recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (2006). She was also shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards (2007).  

Sison has shown in both solo and group exhibitions locally and abroad since 1996, in spaces such as West Gallery, Valentine Willie Fine Arts in Malaysia, Artesan Gallery in Singapore, Artinformal, Manila Contemporary, Silverlens Gallery, Blanc Gallery, and the Owen James Gallery in New York, to name a few. She has participated in international group exhibitions in Belgium (2000), Singapore (2002), and Italy (2009). 

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.

Pam Yan Santos (b. Manila, Philippines, 1974) lives and works in Pasig, Philippines. Yan Santos received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) degree from the University of the Philippines (1995). She was a faculty member at the UP College of Fine Arts from 1997 to 2001. In 2003 she won first prize in the print category of the AAP Annual Art Competition. In 2009, she received the CCP’s Thirteen Artist’s Award and was short-listed for the Ateneo Art Awards.

Yan Santos has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Finale Art File, Makati City, Philippines; Pinto Museum, Antipolo City, Philippines; The Drawing Room, Makati City, Philippines; Bencab Museum, Baguio City, Philippines; Artinformal, Mandaluyong City, Philippines; Tin-aw Art Gallery, Makati City, Philippines. Her works have been exhibited at Silverlens Gallery, Philippines; 5th Mondial Triennale of Small-Sized Prints, France; Nunu Fine Art, Taipei; Art Stage, Singapore; Block 6 #02-09 Gillman Barracks, Singapore; Art Basel, Hong Kong; Asia Now, Paris; and Danubiana Muelensteen Art Museum, Slovakia.

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.