Curatorial Team

RAENA ABELLA

Raena Abella is an artist based in Manila Philippines. She studied Fine Arts, Major in Painting, from the University of the Philippines, and took further studies in Black and White Photography at International Center of Photography in New York City; Wet plate collodion at Gallery 44 in Toronto; and Platinum Printing at Penumbra Foundation in New York City.

Her work has graced the exhibitions at Manila Contemporary, Mo Space, Art Center, Light and Space Contemporary, Ayala Museum, Finale Gallery, West Gallery, Blanc Gallery, Galleria Duemila, TAKSU Singapore, Artinformal and Artfair PH.

Raena is currently focusing her photography on a new series ranging from landscapes to the human form. Her fine art explorations expand and dissolve the boundaries of the medium through digital photography and alternative photographic production processes such as wetplate collodion and silvergelatin print. 

As a testament to the alchemy of technique and intuition, Raena's work as an Operations Manager for a construction company and her training as a certified engine mechanic truly inform her unique artistic vision and visual narratives.

Jes Aznar

Jes Aznar is a full time photographer, both as documentary and photojournalist,  currently based in Manila, focusing on Asia and the Pacific.  

He has exhibited in China, Southeast Asia, Europe and The U.S. and has won  numerous awards including the prestigious SOPA award for best in  photojournalism in his coverage of the aftermath of typhoon Haiyan for The New  York Times.  

His  passion for documentary led him to Hacienda Luisita in Central Philippines to document the brewing workers and peasant uprising inside the plantation that resulted in the infamous massacre in 2004. He has then started to document  social issues from labor and peasants welfare to human conditions and human  rights.  

Jes is currently contributing primarily to The New York Times and Getty Images.  Nearly two years during the onslaught of the Philippine government’s brutal  campaign against drugs, he started @everydayimpunity on instagram as a  platform where we can visually see the consequences of impunity in our society.

Tom Epperson

Tom Epperson was born in Ohio but grew up in California, lived in Australia for ten years and now based in the Philippines since in 1985. He worked in the animation industry for 14 years working mostly for Hanna Barbera and Disney studios. He set up his first commercial studio in Manila in 1989 concentrating mostly on editorials, portrait, ad campaigns and he eventually transitioned to architecture and fine art.


Apart from this, his artistic prowess as a distinguished photographer is demonstrated in many high-profile art shows that featured him. His very first show entitled “One Light” consisted of 55 portraits, was the first photo exhibit ever hosted in the renowned Ayala Museum. Showing truly inspired artistry, a month-long trip to Mongolia moved him to create the two part “Frozen” series which were separately sponsored and hosted by industry giants, BMW Philippines and the Shangri La Philippines.


In 2009 Tom was the first Manila-based photographer to be invited for an exhibit at the Tyler Rollins Gallery located in the Chelsea district of New York. The exhibition “12 BELOW” featured the story of a Filipino family’s memorabilia literally frozen in blocks of ice and metaphorically, in time.


Tom is currently working on a new series that explores the effects of humans on Mother Nature.

Stephanie Frondoso

Stephanie Frondoso is a curator, writer and artist working and living in the Philippines.  As an independent curator, she works for several local galleries by organizing and installing exhibitions, writing exhibition notes and interviewing artists for galleries’ social media content. Between 2017-2022, she has curated 21 exhibitions. Her special projects include media content for ALT Philippines, a collective of nine galleries that organizes large scale group shows with social initiatives, and occasional work for Salcedo Private View, the private treaty sales platform of premiere local auction house Salcedo Auctions.

Her international project Spektacularis, a collaboration of Filipino artists with Czech glassmakers, was exhibited at Singapore Art Week, Milan Salone, Paris Design Week, Prague, Art Fair Philippines and the Ateneo Art Gallery. Currently she is on the curatorial committee of nationwide photography festival Fotomoto.  Frondoso graduated from the University of Asia & the Pacific with a degree in AB Humanities. In 2019, she completed a summer curatorial program at the Sotheby’s Institute in New York.

Wawi Navarroza

Wawi Navarroza is a Filipino contemporary artist known for her works in photography, actively exhibiting in galleries and museums in the Philippines and internationally. Her images navigate Self and Surrounding as seen in her works in contemporary landscape, constructed tableaus and self-portraits. Informed by tropicality within the dynamics of post-colonial dialogue, globalization, and the artist as transnational, her works transmute personal experience to the symbolic while probing materials and studio practice; all perhaps to mirror a path to understanding a deeper sense of place & identity.

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). Navarroza has been a strong proponent of the printed format as an extension of artistic work and with this, has published two books “DOMINION” and “Hunt & Gather, Terraria”, launched respectively at Offprint Paris and PS1MoMA. In 2015, she founded Thousandfold, a contemporary photography platform and the first photobook library in Manila, with Thousandfold Small Press as its publishing arm. As an educator, she gives periodic workshops and is a recognized speaker to photography talks, reviews, and conferences in the Philippines and aboad.

She currently lives and works in İstanbul.

Neal Oshima

Neal Masao Oshima is a commercial, editorial and fine art photographer based in Manila, Philippines.  

He worked as a commercial photographer in Manila in the late 70’s, co-founding the Shadow Visual Design Group that serviced the advertising and design requirements of major retail groups in the Philippines.

After Shadow, he became an independent fashion and advertising photographer for clients such as Pepsi, Unilever, Coke, San Miguel, Levi - Strauss, Bench and Avon.  Selected assignments included an audio visual presentation for the Inno Sotto fashion show in Paris, France; fashion assignment for the Toppy group in Hong Kong and Maui, Hawaii; annual reports for the Ayala Corporation, for which he won awards for best annual report for two consecutive years. 

Exhibitions of Mr. Oshima’s work include Personal Visions: A Survey of Contemporary Photography at the Ayala Museum in 1999; Barot, a solo exhibit of photograms of traditional Philippine garments that opened the Sepia International Gallery in Soho, NYC; and Lovelock, an exhibit of hair landscapes at the Alliance Francaise, Manila in 2001. He has worked extensively with traditional silver-based print techniques. His platinum prints are part of major corporate and private collections in Europe, Asia and the United States. Two of his large photograms sold at auction at Sotheby’s HK.

Gio Panlilio

Gio Panlilio is a curator, photo editor and exhibiting artist. He is the co-founder of Tarzeer Pictures, which provides a platform for emerging photographers to exhibit and develop work. His personal projects often deal with the complexities of space and the human interactions contained within them.