Here Are CCP's 2024 Thirteen Artists Awards Recipients

(SPOT.ph) The Cultural Center of the Philippines has just announced the 2024 Thirteen Artists Awards (TAA) recipients.

Now in its 54th year, this triennial recognition spotlights trailblazing young talents who are redefining the contemporary local art scene. Spanning diverse mediums from textiles to performance, TAA honorees "restructure, restrengthen, and renew artmaking and art thinking that lend viability to Philippine art."

Next time you visit your local museums or galleries, keep an eye out for the works of these artists, who may well become the next faces of Philippine art.

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Here are the recipients of the CCP Thirteen Artists Awards 2024:

Catalina Africa

Catalina Africa is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, sound, sculpture, video, and performance. She creates art that serves as invocations to the Earth’s magic and mysteries. Based in Aurora Province, she cultivates a devotional practice to Spirit, collaborates with the living land, and transforms Earth songs into artistic expressions. Africa is represented by Silverlens Gallery.

Denver Garza

Denver Garza, a former mental health worker with a Psychology background, creates multidisciplinary art that explores identity, beliefs, and social dynamics through painting, mixed media, and participatory performances. His works delve into themes like self-exploration, family dynamics, and resilience, reflecting on life’s uncertainties through a psychosocial lens.

Russ Ligtas

Russ Ligtas is a multidisciplinary artist and performer with over two decades of creative work and collaborations in Cebu, Manila, and beyond. His solo art—spanning performance, installation, painting, sculpture, choreography, and film—uses alter egos to explore the Filipino body as a mythological, historical, and anthropological entity.

Ella Mendoza

Ella Mendoza is a Manila-based ceramic artist who has evolved her craft from functional wares to a play on conceptual, sculptural, and installation pieces. She has exhibited her work locally and internationally, participated in prominent art fairs, and presented at events like the Australian Ceramics Congress. Mendoza has degrees in Painting and Art History.

Henrielle Baltazar Pagkaliwangan

Henrielle Baltazar Pagkaliwangan is a Cavite-born artist who examines Philippine history and material culture through hand-pulled prints and drawings inspired by natural history illustration and taxonomy. She has received accolades, such as winning the grand prize at the Don Papa Rum Art Competition, which earned her a one-month residency in Florence, Italy. Pagkaliwangan has exhibited her art both here and abroad in countries like Indonesia, Korea, and Taiwan.

Issay Rodriguez

Issay Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on humanism and ecology. She integrates art and technology through research, community engagement, and collaboration. Rodriguez is a trustee for both the Philippine Botanical Art Society (PhilBAS) and the Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society Inc. (PNPCSI). She currently teaches at UP Diliman and serves as Assistant Director for Healing and Regenerative Arts at Mahalina Foundation.

Luis Antonio Santos

Luis Antonio Santos is a Quezon City-based visual artist whose work explores themes of memory, entropy, isolation, and longing through painting and photography. His art uses oil painting, printing, and image manipulation to reflect how memories evolve and change over time, often using everyday materials as metaphors for identity and space. Santos has exhibited internationally and received multiple awards, including the Fernando Zobel Prize and the Embassy of Italy Purchase Prize at the Ateneo Art Awards 2023.

Joshua Serafin

Joshua Serafin is a multidisciplinary Filipino artist based in Brussels, blending dance, performance, visual arts, and choreography. A Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia honoree, Serafin's work has been showcased internationally in venues such as Esplanade in Singapore, BIT Teatergarasjen in Norway, Anti Festival in Finland, Nightshift in Ostende, Beursschowburg in Brussels, Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, Haus Der Kulturen der Welt HKW, HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, and TONO Festival in Mexico. They are currently a house artist at Viernulvier.

Jel Suarez

Jel Suarez is a self-taught visual artist based in Bacolod City, with a background in Psychology and Special Education. After transitioning to full-time art in 2017, she gained recognition through solo exhibitions and received the Italian Embassy’s Purchase Prize at the Ateneo Art Awards. Suarez has also been a finalist for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize and recently participated in the Leipzig International Art Programme residency in Germany.

Tekla Tamoria

Ma. Athela “Tekla” Tamoria, a graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, transitioned from a corporate career to pursue textile art after studying tailoring. She has participated in several art fairs and museum exhibitions and completed residencies in Japan and the Philippines. In 2023, she received the Ateneo Art Awards’ Fernando Zóbel Prize for Visual Art and is set for a residency at NoSpace in Baguio.

Derek Tumala

Derek Tumala is a visual artist whose work explores ecological world-making through diverse media, focusing on the interconnectedness between humans, nature, and the built environment. His practice spans knowledge systems, emerging technologies, and performance, with projects presented at prominent venues like Art Basel Hong Kong and the Museum of Contemporary Art & Design-Manila. In 2024, Tumala was named one of ArtReview Magazine’s Future Greats.

Vien Valencia

Vien Valencia is an artist whose work blends community, time, site, and anthropology to explore the impact of environmental and social issues. He works on alternative archive projects, tied together by an interest in challenging traditional methods of archiving.

Liv Vinluan

Liv Vinluan has been exhibiting her work for over 16 years. Her art often centers around history, delving deep into the concepts of death, mortality, the cyclical nature of history, and the inconsistencies of human behavior and time.

How are the Thirteen Artists Awards recipients selected?

This year's awardees were selected from over 108 nominations collected from May to early July 2024. These nominations and submissions were collected from various art groups, museum and gallery directors and curators, art critics, art educators, and former Thirteen Artists Awardees from all over the Philippines.

The selection committee, composed of Phyllis Zaballero (Thirteen Artists 1978), Antipas Delotavo (Thirteen Artists 1990), Buen Calubayan (Thirteen Artists 2009), Wawi Navarroza (Thirteen Artists 2012), and CCP VAMD officer-in-charge Rica Estrada Uson, reviewed the nominees’ portfolios.

The committee considered many factors in choosing the Thirteen, including artistic innovation, integrity, the ability to engage with contemporary themes, and their contributions to the advancement of visual arts in the Philippines. Moreover, the selection committee ensured that all nominated artists had demonstrated sustained artistic activity, evidenced by a track record of individual exhibitions and group shows over at least the past three years.

Each TAA recipient will get a cash grant to cover the cost of materials for producing new work for a group exhibition, which will open in 2025. They will also get a trophy designed by a 13 Artists Awardee that's specially commissioned for the 2024 Thirteen Artists Awards. The artists will also get to participate in CCP's public programs of discussions, lectures, workshops, and other activities.

TLDR: the 13 awardees were chosen for their artistic excellence and their potential to influence and inspire the future of Philippine art.

For more information, visit the CCP Thirteen Artist Awards website.

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