Photo: Ateneo Art Gallery
Cover Photo: Ateneo Art Gallery

The Ateneo Art Gallery officially named the winners of this year's Ateneo Art Awards. Read on to know who they are

In an online ceremony, the Ateneo Art Gallery (AAG) has revealed the winners of the prestigious Ateneo Art Awards 2021. Three young artists were carefully selected from a shortlist of 12 by seven jurors.

Artists Nice Buenaventura, Christina Lopez, and Jo Tanierla bagged the coveted 2021 Ateneo Art Awards – Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art. It is the first time that these promising individuals were shortlisted and recognised for the prize.

Buenaventura won for her solo exhibition titled Fools will copy but copies will not fool. The exhibit was held at Artinformal Makati from June 1 to 29, 2019. In the show, Buenaventura attempted to mimic print failures using charcoal and oil in the same spirit as to how a printer produces "unfaithful copies".

Read also: Ateneo de Manila University Ranks As Most Impactful University From The Philippines

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Photo 1 of 2 Fools will copy but copies will not fool
Photo 2 of 2 Artist Nice Buenaventura

Meanwhile, artist Christina Lopez highlighted the power of artificial intelligence and the weaponisation of identities in her show Portraits (Proxies). The exhibit was held from March 7 to 31, 2020 at The Drawing Room in Makati. 

Lopez' exhibit was cut short following the temporary closure of local art galleries and museums due to COVID-19. In what was her first solo exhibition, Lopez reflected on her own paranoia over surveillance by rendering portraits of people who do not exist using a dataset that consists of over 500 profile pictures of paid trolls in the Philippines.

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Photo 1 of 3 Portraits (Proxies)
Photo 2 of 3 Portraits (Proxies)
Photo 3 of 3 Artist Christina Lopez

Jo Tanierla, on the other hand, won for his show Pagburo at Pag-alsa: Natural Depictions and Illustrated Prophecies (Gelacio, 1910). Held from October 20 to December 12, 2020 at Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center in UP Diliman, his show featured a historical fiction set in 1910 Luzon about the journey of Gelacio and Manta-tio from Malagonlong bridge in Tayabas to Pamitinan cave in Montalban. Through illustrated prophecies and journal entries, the project wasTanierla’s response to fascism and its imperialist origins.

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Photo 1 of 5 Pagburo at Pag-alsa: Natural Depictions and Illustrated Prophecies (Gelacio, 1910)
Photo 2 of 5 Pagburo at Pag-alsa: Natural Depictions and Illustrated Prophecies (Gelacio, 1910)
Photo 3 of 5 Pagburo at Pag-alsa: Natural Depictions and Illustrated Prophecies (Gelacio, 1910)
Photo 4 of 5 Pagburo at Pag-alsa: Natural Depictions and Illustrated Prophecies (Gelacio, 1910)
Photo 5 of 5 Artist Jo Tanierla

Because of the on and off quarantine restrictions, the AAG has decided to defer the annual physical exhibition featuring 12 shortlisted exhibits for the Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art. In place of an onsite show, the group will release online a series of video features about the exhibits through its official website.