In line with its mission to nurture and recognize exceptional talent, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) proudly announces the recipients of the prestigious 2024 Thirteen Artists Awards (TAA). The awards program honors young visual artists whose innovative practice has contributed to the development and expansion of contemporary Philippine art.

The awardees for this year are: Catalina Africa, Denver Garza, Russ Ligtas, Ella Mendoza, Henrielle Baltazar Pagkaliwangan, Issay Rodriguez, Luis Antonio Santos, Joshua Serafin, Jel Suarez, Tekla Tamoria, Derek Tumala, Vien Valencia, and Liv Vinluan.

A multidisciplinary artist, Africa considers shapeshifting and earth channeling to be her primary modes of expression. Working with various media, her artworks are invocations to the natural landscape.

A mental health worker prior to pursuing arts, Garza contemplates the meaning and comforts in life, as well as its uncertainties, through the psyche and the psychosocial, in his art practice. His works stem from intrapersonal dissections of identity, beliefs, and social dynamics, woven physically into a world through various media.

Cebu-born artist Ligtas draws inspiration from various alter egos, serving as conduits for his explorations of the Filipino body as an expanding mythological matrix and a living historical, geopolitical, and anthropological artifact.

Ceramic artist Mendoza started her practice with functional wares in her early years, and later evolved into a play on contemporary counterparts of traditional vessels, which materialized in her conceptual, sculptural, and installation works.

Pagkaliwangan explores stories behind mundane yet indispensable objects to examine Philippine history and material culture. Drawing from natural history illustration and taxonomy, she documents personal and historical narratives through hand-pulled prints and drawings.

Rodriguez centers her current art practice on themes of humanism and ecology. Through archival research, community engagements, and interdisciplinary collaborations, she explores the articulation of thoughts, emotions, and values through art and technology.

Santos examines memory, entropy, isolation, and longing through his paintings and photography. Utilizing oil painting, printing, and image manipulation, he explores how recollections shift over time—employing everyday materials as metaphors for memory, space, and identity.

Exploring themes of transmigration and queer politics, Bacolod-born multi-disciplinary artist Serafin combines dance, performance, visual arts, and choreography. Centered on Otherness, Serafin’s artistic process is an intense sociological exorcism of Filipino identity about global ideologies, and contemporary phenomena, unpacking the historical violence of its feudal contemporary society and its dehumanizing normality.

Self-taught artist Suarez approaches collage as a way of reading, reinterpreting, and responding to visual phenomena by restating these images as open codes and as new texts in the process of becoming. Her work is openly informed by the physicality of things, being composed of natural objects that she fortuitously finds in surplus shops, books and wooden objects, resulting in encounters of reconfigured archives.

After two years of working in the corporate sector, Tamoria pursued tailoring at a local technical school, allowing her to further her practice of working with textiles. She uses readily available materials and takes inspiration from diverse sources, ranging from costume design to fractal patterns in nature.

Pursuing ecological world-making, Tumala explores the possibilities of art in the form of knowledge, schematics, living systems, object orientation, moving image, emerging technologies, staged performance, and/or public programs. His art practice revolves around the realms of science and nature, meditating on the idea of interconnectedness.

Valencia situates his work at the intersection of community, time, site, process, and anthropology. He works on alternative archive projects, tied together by an interest in challenging traditional methods of archiving.

History remains the singular, defining cornerstone of Vinluan’s works. Her art practice investigates death and mortality, the cyclicality of histories, the inconsistencies of human character and behavior, and the passage of time.

The awardees were carefully selected out of 108 nominations through a meticulous and rigorous evaluation process, which began when the nominations opened in May 2024. The CCP Visual Arts and Museum Division (CCP VAMD) received 82 submissions 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, consisting 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.

Considering a wide range of factors such as artistic innovation, integrity, and the ability to engage with contemporary themes, each nominee’s body of work was assessed for their responsiveness to contemporary realities and their contribution to the advancement of the visual arts in the Philippines. The selection committee also ensured that all nominated artists have demonstrated sustained artistic activity, evidenced by a track record of individual exhibitions and group shows over at least the past three years.

Ultimately, the 13 awardees were chosen not only for their artistic excellence but also for their potential to influence and inspire the future of Philippine art, reflecting the CCP’s commitment to recognizing and nurturing exceptional talent in the local art community.

Now in its 54th year, the triennial awards began as a curatorial project of the CCP Museum, led by its first curator Roberto Chabet, aimed at showcasing the works of Filipino artists who sought to “restructure, restrengthen, and renew artmaking and art thinking that lend viability to Philippine art.”

Raymundo Albano, the subsequent director of the CCP Museum and Non-Theater Operations, transformed the CCP TAA into the awards program recognized by the Filipino arts community today. From 1970 to 1980, the TAA was held every two years. It continued in 1988, 1990, 1992, and 1994. After a short hiatus, the TAA was revived in 2000 and transitioned into its current triennial format.

For more information about the CCP Thirteen Artists Awards, visit the Thirteen Artists website (thirteenartists.culturalcenter.gov.ph), the CCP website (www.culturalcenter.gov.ph), and follow the official CCP and CCP VAMD social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube.