New Voices in Art
More than 300 people gathered outside the student union at San José State on October 30 to see a cement pillar painted with Filipino American history, from the farmworkers’ movement to the students who pushed to have it recognized. We want this page to bring people together the same way. Here are the painters, illustrators, sculptors, muralists, and video artists we’re following this season across the U.S. and the Philippines, sorted by medium so you can start with the work you’re most curious about.
Five featured artists, one for each medium, plus 18 more you’ll meet inside each one.
Choose a medium above to read the featured artist’s story and meet the others working alongside them.
Painters working on canvas and paper, many of them returning to old photographs and family archives and painting them again.
Featured in Painting & Drawing
Jenifer K Wofford
San Francisco
In Jenifer K Wofford’s new paintings, a team of Filipinas takes the basketball court in knee socks and Filipiniana, with sleeves of piña, the sheer cloth woven from pineapple fiber. Empress, her solo show at Silverlens New York from November 5 to December 19, 2026, imagines that Filipinas invented the game and still rule the court. The uniforms come from a laborer’s dress she found in a 1905 book of colonial photographs, Philippine Life in Town and Country.
Wofford is a San Francisco painter and one-third of the Filipina American art trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. In March she was named the first recipient of the ARTPOWER Award from Artadia and ARTPOWER, which comes with $15,000 in unrestricted funds.
Start with Empress I (Court), the long canvas you meet first at the gallery.
Also in Painting & Drawing
- Raya Simpao A Manila-born painter in Brooklyn whose first gallery show, No Place at Silverlens New York, came the summer she finished her painting degree at RISD. Website
- Maia Cruz Palileo A Brooklyn painter whose show at David Kordansky Gallery, The World Tangled in You, drew on the colonial photographic archive of the Philippines. See the show
- Hanna Pettyjohn A Dallas painter whose show A Mountain’s Hands painted the jars made by her parents, the ceramicists Jon and Tessy Pettyjohn. See the show
- Is Jumalon A Manila painter whose solo show Topography of Seeing drew on the Mount Pulong Bato monoliths of Zamboanga, where she grew up. See the show
- Ayka Go A Manila painter known for turning paper folds into paintings, whose show small vast things turned to butterflies and her studio garden. See the show
Artists telling stories through graphic novels, picture books, and hand-carved woodcuts.
Featured in Illustration & Print
Tori Tadiar
Metro Manila
Mika Mirasol is a high school student who, a year after her grandmother dies, wakes up with a power she can’t explain and follows it across the Philippine islands into the myths they keep hidden. She is the hero of Ilustra, the graphic novel series by Manila cartoonist Tori Tadiar, drawn in a style that borrows from manga and from Western cartoons.
When Ilustra: Daybreaker came out in September 2025, it became the first graphic novel by a Philippine-based creator published by Disney Hyperion. The second book, Ilustra: Tidalrise, followed on October 27, 2026. Tadiar, who also works in IT, spoke on a fantasy comics panel at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content in Singapore in May.
Start with Daybreaker, then pick up Tidalrise while it’s new.
Also in Illustration & Print
- Lynnor Bontigao A New Jersey picture-book artist, and a programmer for 15 years before that, who illustrated Minh Lê’s Miles Ahead for Knopf in April 2026. Website
- Kara Bodegón-Hikino A former music journalist whose debut graphic novel, Squalo & Mage vs. the Rage of the Bakunawa, grew out of a mini comic about a December Avenue song. Website
- Jhucel A. del Rosario A public school teacher in Naic, Cavite, who won the grand prize of the 2026 PBBY-Alcala Prize for children’s book illustration. Read more
- Ambie Abaño A woodcut artist and UP College of Fine Arts professor whose …beyond body… followed a woman’s life in four woodcuts at Art Fair Philippines 2026. See the work
Installations you walk into and objects you circle around, made from clay, cloth, bamboo, and even ghost fishing nets.
Featured in Sculpture & Installation
Heidi Grace Acuña
Seattle
For two months this fall, the top floor of Seattle’s King Street Station became what Heidi Grace Acuña called a portal of protection, where visitors were asked to call on the buwaya, the crocodile, to guide them and their descendants. Buwaya Baby filled the gallery with textile and television installations and ceramic sculpture, hosted an interdisciplinary fashion show on October 1, and closed November 7 with an artist talk on reconnecting with the crocodile as a revered ancestor.
Acuña was born in Federal Way, raised on O’ahu, and studied interdisciplinary visual art at the University of Washington. Alongside the gallery work, Acuña designs fashion and costumes, styles, and is a founding member of the QT arts collective House of Kilig.
Start with Marcus Donner’s gallery photos of Buwaya Baby on the city’s Art Beat page.
Also in Sculpture & Installation
- Poklong Anading A Manila artist who shapes ghost fishing nets, pulled from the sea on dives with marine biologists, into coral forms. See the show
- Allyza Tresvalles A 26-year-old artist from Lucban, Quezon, whose work Sungkaan, shown in ALT Art’s first Discoveries section, compares the undervalued labor of her town’s weavers to a Filipino board game. Read more
- Leeroy New A Manila artist whose bamboo and plastic-bottle installation Polyp grew pumpkin, cucumber, and bean vines across the front of a Melbourne gallery from November 2025 to February 2026. Website
Murals and public art you can visit in person, painted on walls, pillars, and public squares from Manila to San Jose.
Featured in Murals & Public Art
ChiChai Mateo
San Jose
On October 30, 2026, more than 300 people gathered outside the Diaz Compean Student Union at San José State University to see a cement pillar painted on all four sides with Filipino American history. Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, leaders of the Filipino farmworkers movement, share the pillar with the waves of Filipino migration and the SJSU students who pushed in 2023 for those farmworkers to be recognized.
The muralist, Francesca “ChiChai” Mateo, graduated from San José State in 2013 and later wrote her master’s thesis at the University of San Francisco on colonial mentality in Philippine art. She also founded the streetwear brand Empire in the Air. The Filipino Alumni Network raised $100,000 for the mural, about half of it set aside to keep it preserved.
If you’re near San José State, start with the pillar itself, right in front of the student union.
Also in Murals & Public Art
- Archie Oclos A social-realist muralist who, with four other artists, painted a 50-foot sports mural behind the baseball scoreboard at Manila’s Rizal Memorial Sports Complex in four days. Read more
- Nikita Ares A Cagayan de Oro–born Seattle painter chosen by Urban ArtWorks to paint the main wall of Renton’s new Legacy Square for the 2026 World Cup. Website
- Venazir Martinez A Baguio-born muralist whose red thread runs through murals in cities across the U.S., and who won the first Dream Big prize at the 2025 National Mural Awards. Website
Artists working in video, virtual reality, and film, from a pavilion in Venice to a museum gallery at Stanford.
Featured in Digital & New Media
Martha Atienza
Bantayan Island, Cebu
In one of Martha Atienza’s new videos, a diver sits in a narrow aquarium set outdoors, breathing through a hose, for 53 minutes. Batang No. 1 was part of The Coconut Tree Methodology, her first solo show at Silverlens Manila since 2020, where six bamboo machines filled with water and shells toppled one after another to make the sound of waves.
Atienza lives on Bantayan Island, off Cebu, where she co-founded GOODLand in 2020; the group works on climate issues and has helped secure protected-area ordinances. This year she received Zegna’s VISIBLE Situated Fellowship, and Mytheresa and Zegna hosted a dinner for her during Paris Art Week in October.
Start with Malbago, the two-channel video that traces Bantayan’s shoreline from 2019 to now.
Also in Digital & New Media
- Miljohn Ruperto A Manila-born Los Angeles artist whose first large-scale museum solo, at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, set visitors inside VR landscapes. See the show
- Maria Taniguchi A Manila artist whose show Afterimage at the Singapore Art Museum, from July 24 to November 22, 2026, premiered a new video, A painter, if black were a place. Read more
- Jon Cuyson The artist representing the Philippines at the 2026 Venice Biennale, with a pavilion about Filipino seafarers and a film narrated by mussels from a Cavite farm. Read more
Keep exploring New Voices
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