Wawi Navarroza (b. 1979, Manila, Philippines) is a Filipina lens-based artist. Recognized as one of the foremost names in contemporary Southeast Asian art, she is known for her vibrant large format photographic tableaus and self-portraits which allude to the hybridity of identity, photography, and place.

Born in Manila, with higher education in the West, and moving between Madrid and Istanbul, Navarroza draws upon her transnational experiences to create in-studio collages using a variety of materials, mise en scène, and herself. Informed by tropicality within the context of post- colonial dialogue and globalization, and conscious of her role as a female artist, Navarroza employs her corporeal form as an artistic medium. Her body of work serves as a testament to the various facets and stages of the women’s narrative, portraying woman as creator.

Navarroza’s scenes and depictions emphasize the often overlooked power of symbolic allegory, folk memory, and imaginations of the exoticized “East” to create a rich visual lexicon of criss-crossing references and riddles. She champions textiles, ornament, domestic décor, the handmade, the mass-produced, the high-low, the vernacular and indigenous, as well as the cosmopolitan and the worldly. Captivated by the in-between, Navarroza blends the edges to define her signature tropical gothic.

Navarroza has received a number of awards such as the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship Grant New York, Lucas Artists Fellowship Award for Visual Arts San Francisco, Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Awards, Ateneo Art Awards, Lumi Photographic Art Awards Helsinki, and a finalist for Singapore Museum Signature Art Prize, WMA Commission Hong Kong and Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Her work has been exhibited in museums internationally including the the National Museum of the Philippines, National Gallery Singapore, 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, and Italy.