PHILIPPINES / ART

Contemporary Filipino
Artists to Know

© Sean Hsu / Alamy Stock Photo

Shirin Bhandari
5 November 2018

After a 50-year hiatus, the Philippines’

participation in the 2015 Venice Biennale
helped bring a new wave of local artists
into the limelight. We profile 10
contemporary Filipino artists you should
know.

Did you know you can now travel with Culture

Trip? Book now and join one of our specially
curated small-group tours to discover the
world like never before.

Ernest Concepcion (1977-

present)

Concepcion is a studio artist whose work

experiments with intense emotion,
deconstructing images in his paintings,
sculptures, and installations. He creates art
like recording a music album, where each
painting is from a series of nine. Concepcion
describes it as producing an old favorite, a
classic, sleeper hit and one piece he doesn’t
really like but keeps coming back to.

He is a graduate of the University of the

Philippines, with a Bachelor in Fine Arts while
under the mentorship of pioneer conceptual
artist Roberto Chabet. After graduation, he
moved to New York in 2002 and spent a
significant amount of time in Brooklyn, where
he participated in art residences for the Bronx
Museum of Art Artists-in-the-Marketplace
(AIM) Program, the Artists Alliance Inc.
Rotating Studio Program, and the Lower
Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC)
Workspace Program.

Concepcion returned to Manila in 2013 with a

triumphant solo show at the U.P. Vargas
Museum, after participating in the El Museo
del Barrio La Bienal in New York. He remains
active on the Asian art scene and is a recent
recipient of the 13th Artists Award by the
Cultural Center of the Philippines.

MC
‘OMG CHRIST’, 2015 | © Ernest Concepcion

Ronald Ventura (1973-present)

Ventura is a contemporary artist from Manila,

with a Bachelor’s degree of Fine Arts in
Painting from the University of Santo Tomas.
He initially taught in the same school after
graduating but found his true calling as a
visual artist after his first solo exhibition at the
Drawing Room in Makati in 2000. Ventura’s
work is known to consist of multiple layers,
using imagery that focuses on the human
form. His paintings are a dramatic union of
comic sketches, reality, and graffiti. He draws
inspiration from Asian mythology, Catholicism,
science fiction and comic book characters. He
is known to have the highest selling work in
the history of the Southeast Asian art market:
his painting Grayground sold for a whopping
$1.1 million USD at an auction in Sotheby’s
Hong Kong.

‘Grayground’, 2011 | © Ronald Ventura

Leeroy New (1986-present)

Initially trained as a sculptor, Leeroy’s work

blends theatre, fashion, film, production
design, and public art. He graduated from the
prestigious Philippine High School for the
Arts, before continuing his Fine Arts degree at
the University of the Philippines. He has
received artist residences in Singapore and
Australia and was awarded the 13 Artists
Award by the Cultural Center of the
Philippines in 2014. His large-scale public art
uses common objects and materials found in
everyday environments.

In the sand dunes of Paoay, Ilocos Norte,

Leeroy collaborated with the local
government to convert discarded water tanks
and cement fountains into a post-apocalyptic
park filled with sculptures. His most recent
grant from the Burning Man Global Arts
foundation was used to transform the most
polluted waterway in Manila, the Pasig River,
with floating installations – challenging views
on the environment.

Oscar Villamiel (1953-present)

Born in Caloocan City, Manila, Villamiel is a

multimedia artist known for his large-scale
installations consisting of objects found in
local communities. His art career may have
started later in life, but his installations have
enthralled audiences for the past decade. He
initially worked as a set designer for
television, a leather bag craftsman and a
successful t-shirt company entrepreneur
before holding his first solo exhibition in
2006.

He once filled a room with thousands of

bullhorns in his show Mga Damong Ligaw
(‘Wild Weeds’) in 2014, at the Light and Space
Contemporary in Fairview, Manila. The
bullhorn installation was made to look like a
terrain of weeds when viewed at a certain
angle. Villamiel’s work reflects the current
socio-political situation in the country,
highlighting elements of poverty,
consumerism, and religion. His massive
installation Payatas, which features thousands
of doll heads, was chosen to represent the
Philippines in the Singapore Biennale
exhibition in 2013. It took him two-and-a-half
years to finish this work.

Dex Fernandez (1984-present)

Another Caloocan native, Dexter practices a

variety of mediums ranging from painting to
street art and animation. He most recently
participated in art residency programs in Lir
Art Space, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2013),
Asian Cultural Council in New York, Fine Arts
Work Center, Massachusetts (2015), and
Ongoing Art Center, Tokyo (2016).

His work is influenced by pop culture, graffiti,

children’s drawings, and tattoos – creating
pieces that challenge people’s views on fine
art. He is known locally for his on-going series
of Garapata street art (the Tagalog word for
‘tick’), filling public spaces with the notion of
‘infecting’ the city with his art.

Fernandez has exhibited extensively in top

galleries in the Philippines and abroad,
including in Paris, New York, and the
Singapore Biennale. He recently participated
in the Melbourne Art Fair 2018 with fellow
Filipino, Melbourne-based artist Diokno
Pasilan.

‘Heartache’, 2018 | © Dex Fernandez / The Drawing Room

Neil Pasilan (1971-present)

Brother to artist Diokno Pasilan, Neil is a

Bacolod-born artist from a family of craftsmen
and boat builders. He is a self-taught visual
artist who displayed creativity as a child.
Pasilan has moulded clay figures for most of
his life and continues to use this in his work.

Currently based in Manila, he has become

known for his paintings that hold multiple
layers, using different mediums to expose
new forms. Pasilan’s work has been
represented by the Drawing Room of Manila,
Artinformal Gallery, and West Gallery. A
notable collaboration with Raffy Napay was
featured in Art Fair Philippines in 2017.

‘Isla Hubad’, 2012 | © Neil Pasilan

Kawayan de Guia (1979-present)

This Baguio-born artist is son to legendary

filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik and German artist
Katrin de Guia, and was mentored by famous
Baguio artists BenCab and Santiago Bose.
Kawayan’s art contemplates the Philippines’
changing urban culture. He illogically arranges
texts and icons to compose a painting,
depicting the human form in new ways. His
work draws from popular culture, the media
and mass consumerism. He also creates
sculptures and massive art installations – such
as his Bomba series – and blings out
discarded Jukeboxes.

In 2011, he initiated the Ax(iS) Art Project,

promoting the local artist community in the
chilly hill station of Baguio and the Cordilleras.
Kawayan has held numerous solo exhibitions
in the Philippines and abroad. He was a guest
curator for the Singapore Biennale in 2013.

Patricia Perez Eustaquio (1977-

present)

Eustaquio is an artist who works in various

mediums, experimenting with different
materials through installation, drawing, and
painting. The frames from her painting are cut,
resulting in canvases that evoke images of
wilted flowers and carcasses. Her sculptures
are fashioned from fabric, covering objects
with resin-treated silk or crochet. The object is
then removed, to allow the fabric to retain its
position, folds and drapes. Her work examines
the ideas of perception and memory.
Eustaquio’s solo exhibitions have been held in
Manila, New York, Taiwan, and Singapore. In
2016, her site-specific installation was
featured in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

‘The Mountain is Coming’, Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2016 | © Patricia

Perez Eustaquio / Silverlens Gallery

Martha Atienza (1981-present)

Born to a Dutch mother and Filipino father,

Atienza continues to live both in the
Philippines and Holland. After receiving her
Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Academy of
Visual Arts and Design in the Netherlands,
she accepted residency grants from England,
Australia, New York and Singapore. Her video
art reflects snapshots of reality and the
environment drawn from her Filipino and
Dutch roots.

She is currently interested in using

contemporary art as an aid to bring about
social change. In 2017, she won the Baloise
Art Prize at Art Basel International Fair for her
video installation Our Islands, 11°16`58.4”
123°45`07.0”E., which shows a traditional
Catholic procession from the Philippines
under water.

Elmer Borlongan (1967-present)

The Manila-based artist often refers to Filipino

culture in his paintings, drawing from
everyday scenes of local urban life, which
sharply depict an imperfect world.
Borlongan’s work is a favorite among
collectors and at auctions. In his first major
work, Rehimen (1988), he uses bold
brushwork to manipulate the Marlboro
emblem, which is guarded by a pack of dogs
as an emaciated figure lays in despair in the
foreground. The painting represents the
marginalized Filipino people who are living in
poverty, with no way of moving forward. In
February 2018, Borlongan celebrated a
retrospective of 25 years in art, showcasing
more than 150 paintings and 50 drawings
featured in the Metropolitan Museum of
Manila.

Interested in exploring more of Asia? Check

out our 12-day trip to Japan or our 10-day
adventure to Northern Thailand to experience
the cultural diversity of this continent for
yourself.

Read Next

ART

10 Burmese Contemporary Artists And Where To

Find Them

ART

The Most Famous Filipino Artists and their

Masterworks

ART

Vietnam’s 10 Best Contemporary Artists

ART

11 Cambodian Contemporary Artists You Should

Know

ART

The 10 Korean Contemporary Artists You Should

Know

ART

10 Contemporary Artists From Montreal You Should

Know

ART

11 Emerging Contemporary Artists From Nashville to

Know

ART

Top Filipino Photographers to Watch Out For

ART

Six Contemporary Artists from Algeria at the Mosaic

Rooms

ART

10 Contemporary Greek Artists You Should Know

ART

10 Japanese Contemporary Artists To Know

ART

13 Contemporary Artists in Sri Lanka You Should

Know

THE COMPANY CONTACT US

About Us Get in Touch

The Content Team Advertise & Partner
Press Office Careers