Rodel Tapaya

Rodel Tapaya (b. 1980) is a painter whose large, densely populated canvases draw on Philippine folklore, pre-colonial myth and oral tradition, set against contemporary social and political life. He was born in Montalban, Rizal, and studied at the College of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines, later taking intensive painting and drawing at Parsons School of Design in New York and studying at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki.

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His research draws on the folklore scholarship of Damiana Eugenio, and the myths he recovers are rarely illustrated straight. Figures overlap and interrupt one another across the picture plane, and the result reads less as narrative than as a crowd of competing accounts. Alongside acrylic on canvas he works in under-glass painting, drawing, diorama and traditional craft techniques.

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In 2011 he won the Grand Prize of the APB Foundation Signature Art Prize, awarded with the Singapore Art Museum, for Baston ni Kabunian, Bilang Pero di Mabilang. He received the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 2012 and, earlier in his career, a Nokia Art Awards prize for the Asia-Pacific region. His work is held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Singapore Art Museum, the Deutsche Bank Collection and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.