Rodel tapaya biography of alberta

Celebrated as one of the most important painters in Southeast Asia, Filipino artist Rodel Tapaya is known for his large-scale canvases, narrative murals and sculptural installations that evoke the primordial rainforests of indigenous folklore as allegories for the present reality.

By forming thought-provoking instantiations of myth and contemporary existence—such as beastly  incarnations of gods beside factories and television antennas—his works are both a retelling and a continuation of the oral and pictorial worlds of bygone eras.

Born in Montalban, Philippines, in 1980, Tapaya grew up immersed in the oral and pictorial tradition of his rural environment situated at the periphery of Manila, one of the world’s largest urban sprawl.

As a student at the University of the Philippines, he studied alternative interpretations of supernatural traditions through Professor Damiana Eugenio’s scholarly work. Since then, he devoted his career to painting tableaus that not only illustrat