The Winners of the Ateneo Art Awards Are In—Here’s What’s in Store for Them

(SPOT.ph) The Ateneo Art Awards just revealed this year’s winners, shining a spotlight on some of the country’s most exciting contemporary artists. And really, it’s a good moment to remember what all that creativity stands for.

Art, after all, is more than talent and skill—it’s creative vision at work. It’s storytelling in its rawest form, whether told through movement, visuals, or words. It captures the present, questions it, and dreams beyond it. Yet for all its power, "artist" is still one of the most underrated professions—often called a vocation, sometimes even a gamble.

It’s this spirit of creativity and courage that the Ateneo Art Awards celebrate every year. Here's what you need to know about the award and its winners this year.

Awards might not be the ultimate measure of what makes art good, but they do something just as vital—they make artists feel seen. In a world that doesn’t always value creative work, that kind of spotlight can mean everything.

The Ateneo Art Awards is one of the platforms that continues to put the spotlight on some of the country’s most outstanding artists. First launched in 2004 by then–Ateneo Art Gallery (AAG) Director Ramon E.S. Lerma, the program began as an annual recognition of fresh, boundary-pushing approaches to art-making. Now held every other year, it has evolved into a leading contemporary art prize—one that’s helped spotlight a new generation of visual artists and writers shaping the country’s creative landscape.

In 2014, the awards program expanded on this vision by introducing two distinct categories: the Ateneo Art Awards – Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art and the Ateneo Art Awards – Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prizes in Art Criticism.

Named after the Ateneo Art Gallery's founding donor, Fernando Zobel, this prize aims to recognize and provide opportunities to Filipino visual artists under the age of 36 whose work promotes Philippine contemporary art practice and enriches the art landscape. Nominees for this category must have held their shows between May 2023 and May 2025.

For the 2025 Ateneo Art Awards, four of the 12 nominees announced earlier in the year will be selected by the AAG's local and international partners to win a slew of one-month artist residencies, including ABungalow (Talisay, Negros Occidental), CASA San Miguel (San Antonio, Zambales), La Trobe University - La Trobe Art Institute (Bendigo, Australia), Liverpool Hope University (Liverpool, United Kingdom), OCAD University (Ontario, Canada), Project Space Pilipinas (Lucban, Quezon Province), and new residency partners Koganecho Area Management Center (Yokohama, Japan) and Monsoon Southeast Asia (Singapore).

This year's winners are: Uri de Ger, Silke Lapina, Hannah Reyes Morales, and Jel Suarez.

Uri De Ger's winning exhibit is called Beauty Is In The Eye of The Colonizer was originally shown at KalawakanSpacetime from October 27 to November 30, 2024. It explores how colonial history still shapes Filipino ideas of beauty, value, and identity. His work invites viewers to see beauty as a political construct—and to think about who sets the rules.

Uri De Ger is a recipient of the No Space Residency Grant.

Silke Lapina is a German-Filipino visual artist based in Germany and Manila. A multimedia creator, her practice spans large-scale photography on textiles, gilded canvases, hand-engraved mirrors, ritual performances, transmedia storytelling, and immersive spatial and light installations.

Her winning exhibit, Bakit Pa, was her second solo show in the Philippines, held from March 1 to 28 at Edoweird Gallery. For Lapina, Bakit Pa goes beyond being a Jessa Zaragosa song of longing—it’s a meditation on faith, doubt, and resilience. Growing up between Filipino Catholicism and a secularizing German society, she explores the tensions between devotion and skepticism, questioning what keeps belief alive when its foundations are shaken.

Lapina is the recipient of two art residency grants, namely, Project Space Pilipinas Residency Grant and the La Trobe Art Institute- La Trobe University Residency Grant.

Hannah Reyes Morales is a documentary photographer whose images explore how history and current events shape everyday life. Her winning exhibit, Home Holds Still, is her first solo show and was originally shown at Tarzeer Pictures from November 16, 2024, to January 30, 2025. More importantly, it's also a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Her photographs explore the aftermath of loss with quiet dignity and care, offering onlookers a quiet moment to reflect on what remains possible.

Morales is the recipient of the ABungalow Residency Grant, but aside from this, she also bagged the Embassy of Italy Purchase Prize—a special award wherein one of her pieces will be acquired by the Italian Embassy.

Jel Suarez’s winning exhibit, As I Lift One Stone, was originally shown at Blanc Gallery from November 9 to 30, 2024. The show features intimate, hand-held works that reflect Suarez’s experience of moving between Manila and Bacolod, with pieces made from found materials such as book images, wood scraps, and calligraphic fragments.

Jel Suarez received a number of residency grants, including the CASA San Miguel Residency, the Koganecho Area Management Center Residency Grant, the Creative Campus Residency, the Liverpool Hope University Residency Grant, the Monsoon Southeast Asia Collection & LASALLE College of the Arts Residency Grant, and the OCAD University Residency Grant.

The Ateneo Art Awards – Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prizes in Art Criticism was established in honor of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma, pioneering art writer and founder of the Art Association of the Philippines. Started with the goal of making art criticism more accessible, the prize is presented by the Ateneo Art Gallery in partnership with the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation.

For its 12th edition, nominees worked around the theme of "Flight," which the AAG explains as "a symbol of transit. Where are we headed next? Where is the art world headed next? And where is art criticism headed next?" Texts written in both English and Filipino were accepted.

The competition names two winners from the English category—selected by The Philippine Star and ArtAsiaPacific—and one winner from the Filipino category, chosen by Katipunan Journal.

Aside from this, winning writers will also earn month-long residencies from AAG partners, such as Indeks in Bandung, Indonesia, alongside returning hosts, including Orange Project Naranja Residency in Bacolod and The White House in Zambales.

This year's winners are: Bea Belen Ferrer and Pie Tiausas for the English category, and Emersan Baldemor for the Filipino Category.

Bea Belen-Ferrer is a 37-year-old visual artist who works as a museum officer at the Museo Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Her practice revolves around memory, nostalgia, and the need to remember and archive. Her recent works include Breaking Bread, a research and pandesal-making activity exploring creative processes and post-pandemic life at 98B’s Tuloy Kayo, and Tracing the Roots of Philippine Cacao for The Asian Cocoa Project.

Belen-Ferrer’s winning essay, In Between Flight and Fallout: What Would Postwar Modernists Do?, earned her both the Orange Project Naranja Residency Grant and the Indeks Residency Grant. As part of her prize, Hong Kong-based publication ArtAsiaPacific will be publishing six of her pieces over the next year.

Pie Tiausas is a nonbinary illustrator and art writer whose winning essay, The internet is a space for the lonely, dives into Chia Amisola’s internet art anthology KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN. In it, they explore how the online world becomes both a refuge and a mirror for the lonely, marginalized, and disconnected—reflecting our hunger for connection and our constant reach for something new, bigger, and bolder.

As the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for The Philippine Star winner, Tiausas will be contributing a monthly column to the paper’s Arts & Culture section.

Emersan Baldemor is a multi-awarded cultural visionary, multidisciplinary artist, writer, critic, and scholar. Hailing from Paete, Laguna, he was named Pambayang Alagad ng Sining 2024 and has been a three-time grantee of the NCCA Gawad Bagong Biswal and Gallery and Exhibitions programs. Baldemor holds a Master’s in Education and is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing in Filipino at UP Diliman.

His essay Hindi Lahat ng Umaangat ay Naaalala: Si Tandang Ano at ang Politikang Estetiko ng Paglimot—selected by the Katipunan Journal—reflects on the forgotten legacy of Mariano “Tandang Ano” Madriñan, a Paete wood sculptor who earned international acclaim in 1883 but remains largely absent from Philippine art history. As part of his recognition, Baldemor will write two more articles for the biannual research journal. He was also awarded the White House Residency Grant.

The Ateneo Art Awards 2025 exhibition is on view at the 3/F Ateneo Art Gallery, Arete, Ateneo de Manila University, until December 7, 2025. It is open from Monday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Guests may visit the Ateneo Art Gallery for P100. Students from other schools may present their validated school ID to avail of the P50 student rate. PWD cardholders, senior citizens, children below 12, and Ateneo Alumni Association cardholders may enter the museum for free.

For more information, visit the Ateneo Art Gallery's Facebook page.