Wawi Navarroza (b.1979) is an Istanbul-based Filipina multidisciplinary artist known for her works in photography. Her images navigate self and surrounding in constructed tableaus and self-portraits, as well as landscape and installation. She is informed by tropicality within the dynamics of post-colonial dialogue, globalization, and the artist as a transnational agent. As a female artist, Southeast Asian and Filipino, her works transmute lived experience to the symbolic while probing materials and studio practice; exploring the hybridity of identity, photography and place. Navarroza is a graduate of Communications Arts at De La Salle University, Manila. Shortly after, she received continuing education at the International Center of Photography in New York City with a Fellowship Grant from the Asian Cultural Council. For a few years she has been based in Spain where she finished her Masters in Contemporary Photography (Master Europeo de Fotografía de Autor), a scholarship awarded by Instituto Europeo di Design in Madrid.
Solo exhibitions include As Wild As We Come, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, England (2022); Self-Portraits & The Tropical Gothic, Silverlens Galleries, Manila (2019); Medusa, Silverlens Galleries, Manila (2017); On Landscape & Some Dislocations, Galería Patrick Domken, Cadaqués, Spain (2012); When All Is Said And Done, Artesan Gallery, Singapore (2008); Saturnine: A Collection of Portraits, Creatures, Glass & Shadow, Silverlens, Manila / McDermott Gallery, Siem Reap, Cambodia / ArtReflex Gallery, Saint-Petersburg, Russia (2007); Polysaccharide: The Dollhouse Drama, Blacksoup Project Artspace, Manila / Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila / La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia (2005).
Selected group exhibitions include include Living Pictures, National Gallery of Singapore, Singapore (2022); Hat of the Matter, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines (2022); Untitled Miami Beach, with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Miami, USA (2022); Run with Wolves, Lawrie Shabibi gallery, Dubai (2021); Tonight The Air Is Warm, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2021); SF Camerawork, San Francisco (2021); Viva La Frida!, Drents Museum, Netherlands (2021); Anticipating the Day, Silverlens, Manila (2020); Taboo, Vinyl on Vinyl, Makati (2019); Not Visual Noise: Philippine Photography, Ateneo Art Gallery at Areté, Quezon City (2019); ART|JOG|11 Enlightenment, Yogyakarta National Museum, Jogjakarta, Indonesia (2018); Artists’ Books for Everything, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen, Germany (2017); Roundabout: Wawi Navarroza, Mark Valenzuela, Riel Hilario, Adelaide Central Gallery, Australia (2016); Surface Tension: Perspective on the Changing Landscape, Alliance Française de Manille for COP:21 Paris (2015); Still Moving: After Image, South-East Asian contemporary photography survey show, Singapore Art Museum 8Q, Singapore (2014) and The Hope & The Dream in Filipino: Contemporary Photography from the Philippines, The Month of Photography Tokyo 2012, presented by The Photographic Society of Japan and Tokyo Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan (2012).
Highlights and collections
Wawi Navarozza has exhibited widely in the Philippines and internationally, including the National Museum of the Philippines, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, National Gallery of Singapore ( 2022-23), Singapore Art Museum 8Q, Hangaram Museum (Korea), National Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan), Yogyakarta National Museum (Indonesia), Fries Museum of Contemporary Art & Museum Belvedere (Netherlands), Danubiana Museum (Slovakia), and in galleries in Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, London, Spain, Italy, and Russia; with continued participation in international photography festivals and art fairs such as Art Basel HK. Her art has been surveyed in books such as “Photography Today” (Phaidon), “Contemporary Photography in Asia” (Prestel) and “Photography in South East Asia” by Zuang Wubin (NUS Press).