Ateneo Art Awards 2025 shortlist released

THE SHORTLIST of artists and writers for the 2025 Ateneo Art Awards has been released by the Ateneo Art Gallery (AAG).

- 

Since the program became biennial due to the pandemic, it covers exhibits shown during the two-year period between May 2023 and May 2025.

The AAG received 158 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 two-year period.

“We saw new venues among the shortlisted exhibitions this year, like Tarzeer Pictures and Kalawakan Spacetime,” said Ateneo Art Gallery director and chief curator Boots Herrera at the announcement at Shangri-La Plaza on Aug. 19. “Then we have West Gallery which hosted three of the shortlisted exhibitions.”

She noted that 10 out of 12 of the artists on the list are women.

“What's interesting is we didn’t see that while selecting. It just came out like that, showing that a lot of women artists are active,” Ms. Herrera said.

Twelve artists and exhibitions made the FZA shortlist. They are: Lesley-Anne Cao for the exhibit If time is an arrow, what is its target (held during December 2023 at Underground); Uri de Ger for Beauty is in the Eye of the Colonizer (Oct. to Nov. 2024, Kalawakan Spacetime); Lui Gonzales for A Tree Is A Seed As It Falls (March 2025, Kaida Contemporary); Silke Lapina for Bakit Pa (March 2025, Edoweird); Celline Marge Mercado for