Contemporary Arts

• National Artists Award (NAA)

  Prestigious award in the Philippine art scene, established in 1972 by Presidential Decree No. 1001 under Ferdinand Marcos
• 66 awardees have been announced as of now
• Disciplines of the National Artists Award

  • Architecture
  • Design and allied arts
  • Film and broadcast arts
  • Visual arts
  • Literature
  • Dance
  • Music
  • Theater
• Fernando Amorsolo


  • First recipient of the National Artists Award
• Guillermo Tolentino


  • Created Oblation (1935), a geometric sculpture portraying a nude male with hands extended in an expression of sacrifice and freedom
• Abdulmari Asia Imao


  • One of his enormous public sculptures is in the garden of the Vargas Museum
• Benedicto Cabrera


  • Iconic Variations of Sabel (2015), made of aluminum sheets, can be found at the UP Theater
• Jose Joya


  • Mural in the Virata School of Business titled Barter of Panay (1978) is composed of alternating zones of black, white, orange, brown, and golden yellow in an Abstract Expressionist style
• Napoleon Abueva


  • Abstract sculpture Spirit of Business (1979), looks like something pulled out from science fiction as it consists of a metal disk with jagged spikes extending from it
• Leandro Locsin


  • Designed the Church of the Holy Sacrifice in UP Diliman, the first Catholic church in the nation to use a circular architecture with a thin shell dome inspired by the spirit of time
• Arturo Luz


  • A terrazzo floor work is another work of the Modernist style which shows the end of the rivers at the altar in a whirling pattern of planar forms
• Vicente Manansala

  • His 15 Stations of the Cross resonated the use of flat and angular forms, assisted by Ang Kiukok
• Jose Maceda


  • Avant-garde composer, musician, and ethnomusicologist who founded the UP Center for Ethnomusicology and donated his collections to the UNESCO Memory of the World, his Pagsamba was composed of hundreds of mixed voices of indigenous musical instruments
• The NAA is a Presidential decree-based prize, given by two main artistic agencies, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Cultural Center of the Philippines
• Gawad sa Manlilikhang Bayan (GAMABA)


  Awarded to someone who creates for the nation, established in 1992 by Republic Act No. 7355 through 2012
• GAMABA awardees by category


  • Weaving
  • Literature and Performing Arts
  • Plastic Arts
• Plastic Arts

  • Eduardo Mutuc
  • Teofilo Garcia
• Diokno Pasilan


  • Neo-ethnic musician, visual artist, and former art director from Negros who raised awareness regarding the need to be more conscious of our environment by coloring his skin green in a production for the Third Bagasbas Beach International Eco-Arts Festival
• Digital Tagalog


  • A work created through the collaboration of Lani Maestro and Poklong Anading, using bamboo as a primary material in a 2012 exhibition at Mo Gallery
• Agnes Locsin


  • A choreographer living in Davao who redefined a part of Marinduque's Moriones Holy Week festival using contemporary dance styles
• Moriones tells the story of the Roman centurion Longino's conversion to Christianity
• Diokno Pasilan


  Neo-ethnic musician, visual artist, and former art director from Negros who defines "local" as encompassing a variety of locations such as Palawan, Baguio, and Bicol
• Digital Tagalog


  A work created through the collaboration of Lani Maestro and Poklong Anading, another project that uses bamboo as a primary material, exhibited at Mo Gallery in 2012 utilizing stacks of bamboo to fill a room
• Agnes Locsin


  A choreographer living in Davao who redefined a part of Marinduque's Moriones Holy Week festival using contemporary dance styles
• Moriones


  Tells the story of the Roman centurion Longino's conversion to Christianity, presented in France by professional male dancers moving to Serra Pelada by the avant-garde musician, Philip Glass
• Rody Vera's Ang Post Office

  An adaptation of a children's play originally written by the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore, about a dying Indian boy who learns about the world through the people he interacts with over the course of just one day, first staged at the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) Center
• Fugtong: The Black Dog

  A play by the community theater group Aanak di Kabiligan, based on a folk tale about a family who is ostracized for choosing to keep Fugtong, their black dog, which is thought to carry bad luck, directed by Rey Angelo Aurelio
• Bakata: Battle of the Street Poets

  A local community theater production featuring Smokey Mountain-based youth as actors, dancers, and rappers, directed by Rey Angelo Aurelio who collaborates with young people who are disadvantaged
• Limen


  Produced by Lani Maestro in France in 2014, planned to construct a bridge that seemingly transported individuals to a liminal point—the fringes of a garden, true to its name which means the point at which a psychological effect starts to be felt, creating a juxtaposition between the industrial and the natural
• Local


  May correspond to widely accessible materials such as certain types of wood or textiles in one's region, may also apply to the artist's current location, may refer to language, production, and technique as well as how they can be utilized in translating and transforming media or art from other countries in order to be more relatable to Filipinos
• Medium


  The material or thing that is used to create a work, artists use these materials to articulate and convey their thoughts and emotions through their art
• Sculptural materials


  • Metal
  • Wood
  • Stone
  • Concrete
  • Glass
  • Clay
• Sculptural works


  • Bulul wood carvings in the Cordillera
  • Carvings of saints in Christian churches
  • Guillermo Tolentino's Oblation
• Architecture


  Considered as three-dimensional art, structures that people live in, heavily influenced by time, construction materials such as wood, cement, stone, bricks, and bamboo
• Painting


  To create, a painter uses various types of paints such as acrylic, oil, watercolor, and ink, typically applied to a flat surface such as canvas, wood, paper or walls
• Printmaking


  Involves use of ink which is applied or deposited on a surface using a tool that allows the printmaker to duplicate or reproduce a particular design
• Music


  A form of art that is produced using instruments and sound, which also include the human voice
• Dance


  Involves the use of the dancer's body and movements, may be performed in order to tell stories, but they can also express ideas that are not based on a story
• Theater


  An art form that combines several types of media, to be executed well, elements such as set design, script, and stage direction should be cohesive to enable the dance, visual, musical, and other components to form an integrated whole
• Photography and filmmaking


  Use the camera as their medium for creating art