Wawi Navarroza is a Filipina contemporary artist with an international art practice known for her works in photography. Her works navigate self and surrounding as seen in her self-portraits, landscapes and installations. 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 using material and studio techniques; creating images that explore the hybridity of identity, photography and place.

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

Her works are in the collection of Bangko Central ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of the Philippines), Metropolitan Museum of the Philippines, Menarco Tower/The Vertical Museum at Bonifacio Global City, and Stora Enso Photography Museum in Oulu, Finland. 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.

Wawi Navarroza is represented by Silverlens Gallery (Manila/New York) and Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (London/Berlin/Palm Beach).


Selected Artworks

Wawi Navarozza

Plus Minus, 2009

Archival pigment print

81 cm x 122 cm
Wawi Navarozza

We'll Be Safe Here, 2010

Archival pigment print

81 cm x 122 cm, Edition 1 of 10
Wawi Navarozza

Untitled (Seamilk), 2012

Archival inkjet print

50 cm x 70 cm
Wawi Navarozza

100 Years Between Us (after Frida Kahlo’s "Self-Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser/Autorretrato Dedicado al Dr. Eloesser", 1940),, 2007

Archival Lambda Durst print

76 cm x 51 cm, Edition 1 of 10
Wawi Navarozza

Still Missing (You), 2007

Archival Lambda Durst print

77.47 cm x 121.92 cm
Wawi Navarozza

I Want to Live a Thousand More Years (Self-portrait After Dengue with tropical plants and fake flowers), 2016

Archival pigment print

127 cm x 101.6 cm, Edition 3 of 5
Wawi Navarozza

May in Manila / Hot Summer (After Balthus, Self-Portrait), 2019

Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle, cold mounted on acid-free aluminium, with artist's exhibition frame, i.e., wrapped fabric on double wood frame custom tinted to WN skin tone

135.89 cm x 101.6 cm, Edition 1 of 5
Wawi Navarozza

Start Here | A Lesson on Looking (Self-Portrait with Mandarins), 2019

Archival pigment print

114.3 cm x 76.2 cm, Edition 1 o 6
Wawi Navarozza

Heavy Head (Self-portrait with Towels), 2022

Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle, cold-mounted on acid-free aluminium

80 cm x 60 cm, Edition 1 of 5