At the heart of Rodel Tapaya’s work is his ongoing amalgamation of folk narrative and contemporary reality within the framework of memory and history. Utilizing a range of media — from large acrylic on canvasses to an exploration of under-glass painting, traditional crafts, diorama, and drawing — Tapaya filters his observations of the world through folktales and pre-colonial historical research,  creating whimsical montages of his characters.

Each work has its origin in Tapaya’s reflections on a particular time or place that possesses an enduring resonance, from its correspondence with the formalistic and psychological implication of the grid in his earlier works to protracted ventures which excavate and interpret myth and folk aesthetics. Inherent in the work is a tension between objective investigations of art and the subjectivity of perception and experience, providing his work with an enigma that comes from the impossibility to paint a story without revealing inflections made by the painter’s hand.

Rodel Tapaya is one of the most active artists in Southeast Asia today. His breakthrough came when he was awarded the coveted Top Prize in the Nokia Art Awards, which allowed him to pursue intensive drawing and painting courses at Parsons School of Design in New York and the University of Helsinki in Finland. He completed his studies at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts.