THE SHORTLIST of artists and writers for the 17th Ateneo Art Awards has been released by the Ateneo Art Gallery (AAG).
Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the program, which give recognition to contemporary artists and art writers, will cover a two-year period — exhibits which were shown between May 2, 2019 to May 1, 2021 — instead of the usual one year.
The AAG received over 140 nominations from museums, galleries, artists, and art educators for the Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art (FZA) category, which recognizes young and upcoming Filipino visual artists under the age of 36 whose works were exhibited within the aforementioned two-year period.
Twelve artists and exhibitions made the FZA shortlist. They are: Brisa Amir for the exhibit “Untitled Blankets” (held during October 2019 at Artinformal Makati); Renz Baluyot for “Empire” (Oct. 2020, West Gallery); Nice Buenaventura for “Fools will copy but copies will not fool” (June 2019, Artinformal Makati); Mars Bugaoan for “Appear Disappear ½ ¼” (April 2020, Kapitana Gallery, Talisay, Negros Occidental); Doktor Karayom for “Patingin” (May 2019, Blanc Gallery); Celine Lee for “The Length and Breadth of Depth” (Nov. 2020, Underground Makati); Christina Lopez for “Portraits (Proxies)” (March 2020, The Drawing Room, Makati); Henrielle Baltazar Pagkaliwangan for the work On This Site Will Rise (Part of a group exhibition “Fathom: The Monumental Art Series,” Oct. 2019, Orange Project, Bacolod); Ioannis Sicuya for “NICHE” (Nov. 2019, The Boston Gallery); Jel Suarez for “small bones, holding a mountain” (Oct. 2020, West Gallery); Jo Tanierla for “Pagburo at Pag-alsa: Natural Depictions and Illustrated Prophecies (Gelacio, 1910)” (Oct. 2020, UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum); and, Miguel Lorenzo Uy for “I am that I am” (March 2021, Underground Makati).
A jury will choose three artists from the shortlist to receive the FZA.
One artist from the 12 shortlisted will also be the recipient of the Ateneo Art Awards-Embassy of Italy Purchase Prize. The award is a partnership between AAG and the Embassy of Italy which seeks to help the Embassy compile a collection of Philippine contemporary art.
Meanwhile, six writers were identified for the shortlist of the other half of the Ateneo Art Awards, the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prizes in Art Criticism (PKL).
In the English Category the writers are: Allyn Canja for the essay The Internet Knows No Region: How artists from Western Visayas broke barriers during a global pandemic; Kiko del Rosario for Piercing Loss, Streaming Desire; Elizabeth Ruth Deyro for The Artist’s Social Responsibility in the Time of Crisis: On Leslie de Chavez’s I Like Art Fairs and Art Fairs Like Me; Carla T. Gamalinda for Art and the inevitable crisis of the screens; Alee Garibay for Birthing an Alternative Culture amidst a Crisis; and, Portia Placino for Forging on by the Mountainside. The shortlisted writers in the Filipino Category are: Jaffy V. Fajardo for “Nandiyan lang kultura at mga sining”; Jord Earving Gadingan for “Habang Wala Pang Matino”; and Mikka Ann Cabangon for “Ang Hikayat sa Pag-aaral ng Sining-bayan.”
Two winners will be selected from the English category. The winner of the PKL Prize for The Philippine Star will be awarded a regular column in the Arts and Culture section of the paper, to be published once a month for a year. The winner of the PKL Prize for ArtAsiaPacific will be contributing six articles to this bi-monthly publication for a year. One winner selected from the Filipino category will be awarded the PKL Prize for the Katipunan Journal and will be contributing two works to this bi-annual research publication for a year.
The three winners in the FZA category will be eligible for local residency grants funded by AAG and its new partner institutions. In addition to the opportunity to have their written work published, one of the winners from the PKL category will also be selected and offered a month-long writer’s residency at Orange Project in Bacolod.
The winners of the 2021 Ateneo Art Awards will be announced on Sept. 15 via livestream. In place of a physical exhibition, the AAG will release a series of videos about the shortlisted exhibits and essays after the online awarding.