Meet the 2024 Thirteen Artists Awards recipients

The Thirteen Artists Award, launched by then-CCP Museum curator Roberto Chabet in 1970, was inspired by the Thirteen Moderns mentioned by the “Father of Philippine Modern Art” Victorio Edades in his published debate with Guillermo Tolentino, the renowned Filipino sculptor who came from the conservative school of thought in classical Philippine art. The Thirteen Moderns in Edades’s Towards Virility in Art article was not an award, but such recognition solidified the reputation of then-emerging artists braving to challenge the conservative art propagated by Tolentino and his peers, primarily Fernando Amorsolo.

Since then, CCP has issued the Thirteen Artists Award—at first, annually, then later on biennially with Raymundo Albano at its helm. Formalisation of the nomination and deliberation process with its current triennial format was applied in 2000.

Read more: 40 other important Filipino visual artists who are not yet National Artists

This year’s awardees are a diverse mix of Filipino contemporary artists shaping today’s scene with their exploratory works specific to their points of interest and proximal environs yet resonate on a national and universal level. These 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.

“Each of you, through your distinct approaches—whether in new media, investigation of history and contemporary life, or pushing traditional boundaries—show us that art exists not in some abstract ideal, but in the actual ways that artists engage with their world,” Tinga continued.

Read more: Luminaries and Legacies: Inside the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining 2024 awards night

A multidisciplinary artist, Africa considers shapeshifting and earth channelling 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, which serve as conduits for his explorations of the Filipino body as an expanding mythological matrix and a living historical, geopolitical, and anthropological artefact.

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 materialised 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.

Read more: Get to know Henrielle Pagkaliwangan

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. Utilising 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. Centred 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 dehumanising 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 images, emerging technologies, staged performances, and/or public programmes. 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 behaviour, and the passage of time.

“Today, we celebrate artists whose vision and dedication move our culture forward, who carve new pathways for the future. In recognising you, we recognise the enduring truth that art lives through those who dare create it. We eagerly anticipate the work you will create and the boundaries you will reshape in the upcoming group exhibition and beyond. Your individual journeys will collectively write the next chapter in Philippine contemporary art,” Tinga concludes.

As announced by its Director-General Jeremy Barns, the 2024 Thirteen Artists Awardees will have a group exhibition in 2025 at the National Museum, much to the recipients’ surprise.

A book cataloguing the history of and criticism towards the Thirteen Artists Award will be published by the VAMD next year in collaboration with Eskinita Art Gallery, helmed by Alfredo Esquillo, a  Thirteen Artists Award recipient in 2000.

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