Marina Cruz

Marina Cruz (Philippines, b. 1982) is a contemporary artist who explores personal memory and narratives embedded in vintage materials and fabrics. Using vintage clothing as the subject of her paintings and sculptures, Cruz captures the folds, creases, and patterns to create textural interest and dimension while small details such as frayed buttons, faded stitching, and stains suggest traces of use.  These portraits of dresses connect material history with personal stories while eliciting broader conversations about gender roles, domesticity, and the legacies of craft and fashion.

She graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. She has participated in several exhibitions in Manila and internationally. In 2021, she presented Tide Table curated by Patrick Flores at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts. In 2008, she won the Grand Prize at the Philippine Art Awards, a prestigious contemporary art competition and exhibition, and was a recipient of the Ateneo Art Award. She was an artist in residence at Melbourne’s La Trobe University Visual Arts Center that year. She was a recipient of the Freeman Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in 2008, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Award in 2012. Together with her husband, the artist Rodel Tapaya, and her three children, she lives and works in Bulacan, Philippines.