MANILA, Philippines – The Thirteen Artists Awards was the brainchild of first Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) curator Roberto Chabet, who handpicked the first batch in 1970, who in turn were presumed to have followed the spirit of the original Thirteen Moderns, led by Victorio Edades.

The awards’ blueprint has not changed: Recipients are artists touted as innovators who have made a break with tradition and perhaps started new styles and traditions. They are men and women of the fine arts who do not pander to the gallery.

CCP Visual Arts and Museo Division head Karen Flores, a former herself, says only the selection process has changed, but the criteria remain the same. The artist’s “anti-commercial” work is given much weight.

The award is bestowed by peers. The jurors for 2009 are critic Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez and past awardees Lao Lian Ben and Mark Justiniani.

Noteworthy is that this group has the highest number of females in the awards’ history. Ahead of the traditional Thirteen Artists Exhibit at the CCP starting July 9, Inquirer takes a glimpse of the artists and their works.

Buen Calubayan is fond of the term “cavation:” His art is about digging into human anguish, frailty, and aggravation that supposedly reinforces his “wish to live as simply as possible, to be one with Nature.” He believes that to achieve this, he has to join a “war” against any system that makes human life too complicated.

In his arsenal are visual allusions that range from deviant arte povera (in his case, growing fungi in varied contraptions) to painting cemetery walls and audio-recording street din in his installations. All this, when all Buen wants is “to just talk about life, not art.”

For the CCP exhibit, he will have a rodent in his maze installation. He promises to consult a veterinarian so as to address the health concerns of both the animal and the audience.

“Action” is performance artist Raquel de Loyola’s semantic favorite. Her work portrays Mebuyan, multi-breasted Bagobo goddess. She is covered in talc, her many nipples spraying white walls with “blood.”

“Passion” drives her to create “a more concrete output of sentiments and ideas.” She “primarily addresses issues on women, colonization, commodity, consumerism, migration, displacement, identity and globalization in the face of uncertainty.”

Don Djerassi Dalmacio says he not only paints, but does a little bit of everything.

Christina Dy, who identifies herself as “the one who draws,” can fill wall after gallery wall with freehand drawings. She has filled a 90-foot long exhibit wall with no less than 500 drawings. Aptly, her word for her art is “obsessive.”

It seems she, indeed, draws much fuel from an eclectic life of artmaking. She has done the production design of “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” and the recently completed “Rakenrol” of Quark Henares. She is also part of the pole-dancing tandem Girl vs Girl.

For Patty Eustaquio, “space” has several meanings: “The context within which I place my work…it is about metaphors,” and the area “that allows the viewer to think and dialogue with my work.” She says her “work is distinguished from others because, albeit feminine, it is irreverently so.”

She has done sculptures of dead animals that bleed flowers of fabric and wax. Her most recent was a “crocheted shell sculpture of an absent piano.” For the exhibit, Patty will be using the same technique, but because it will revolve around the CCP being a “sacred” place for art and its location of reclaimed land and proximity to the sea, she is “building a boat.”

Iggy Rodriguez calls his works “critical,” whether he paints, draws or sculpts. His effigies and murals are testaments to his being a “full-time cultural activist.”

He says that “his studio is wherever the “struggle to serve the people” takes him. He describes his imagery as “things often seen but remain unnoticed.”

Don Salubayba is into documentation and puppetry. He adds that history and its making greatly influence him. He is fond of juxtaposing past and present in what he calls “visual discourse”—whether repetitive, moving forward or backward, but always in the Filipino context.

He has a preference for shadow puppetry, which he admits is not a traditional art form in the Philippines, but which he relishes exactly for its absence of set standards, unlike that of the Indonesian “wayang kulit” or the Chinese puppet plays.

Pamela Yan Santos says her works can be described as “layers,” both figurative and literal. Thus, in painting and printmaking her thoughts (sometimes actual text) and her medium come together in many gradations that make up the character of her compositions.

“These strata of meaning, when combined, enrich and expand the substance of the images created,” she explains.

MM Yu’s operative word is “chance,” and rightly so, as her works are concentrated on photography and abstract art. Her lens always chance upon the succinct image or her paint drops blotches in the most fortuitous manner.

Her work graces the cover of “Playing with Fire, Stories from the Pacific Rim,” a publication of Oxford University Press.

Quiet Jaypee Samson simply “paints,” and perhaps prefers that his pieces be simply viewed.

Raya Martin was at the Cannes film festival during this interview. He is, of course, one of today’s most exciting filmmakers.

Also not present in the interview were Winner Jumalon and Kawayan de Guia. But word is that the latter wants to make for the exhibit an installation that would include a juke box, a development that should further whet the appetite of art lovers.

The 2006 exhibit was curated by Flores and it was then that she introduced a mode of collaboration between curator and artists. It is a model which Wire Tuazon, this year’s curator, follows.

Simply put, the model tries to fit the artist’s work with the exhibit space. Overall, perhaps, the exhibit will showcase “recentness that will always be new,” which, according to Flores, was Chabet’s prime criterion in the choice of the Thirteen Artists.

The Thirteen Artists Awards will be formally announced July 9, during which the exhibit of the new recipients will be unveiled at the CCP Main Gallery. Each artist will receive a trophy designed by Louie Cordero.

E-mail the author at majorday@gmail.com.