Three Filipino artists make the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2026 shortlist
Now in its 22nd year, the Sovereign Asian Art Prize has named 30 artists from 12 countries and territories across the Asia-Pacific region in its 2026 shortlist. Run by the Sovereign Art Foundation, the prize offers international recognition and generous financial awards, while proceeds from the sale of shortlisted works go toward its Make It Better program, a charity initiative sustaining expressive arts groups for children in Hong Kong’s disadvantaged communities.
Curator and museum director David Elliott, who leads this year’s judging panel, captured the spirit of this edition in a conversation with Art and Market, “No unifying theme or tendency emerges from this other than a desire to distill the realities of now… artists across the region remain focused, the surreal clarity of their views expressing the integrity, tension, and, at times, joy of our times.”
Among the 30 finalists across the Asia-Pacific, three are Filipino, including printmaker, painter, and mixed-media artist Joey Cobcobo, transdisciplinary artist Josephine Turalba, and Alvin Zafra, known for his highly technical, process-driven draughtsmanship on sandpaper. With Zafra and Cobcobo nominated by Rica Estrada Uson and Turalba nominated by Chancery Lane Gallery Hong Kong, they bring distinct Filipino perspectives to one of Asia’s most celebrated art prizes.
Joey Cobcobo: The eighth commandment
Born of Igorot and Ilocano heritage, Cobcobo has spent decades cultivating an evolving practice that ranges from personal heritage and cultural memory to spirituality and faith as well as social realism—oscillating between mediums, from printmaking and painting to woodcarving and multi-layered assemblages. A recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 2012, he has participated in international exhibitions in South Korea, Vietnam, the United States, Singapore, and Australia.
His nominated work, “Ika-8 Utos: Wag Kang Kukurap (Thou Shall Not Steal)” immediately suggests political charge in its title, as it “reflects the current situation and conditions in the Philippines, which is corruption,” according to Cobcobo.
Its origins are as layered as its surface, as the artist used a recycled canvas that was previously walked on by the public at a CCP Pasinaya event, with sandals carved with the Ten Commandments pressing inked impressions into the cloth. The work’s front image was originally the back of the canvas, a discovery he made only after stepping away and seeing the image emerge of a child peering through the surface, struggling and searching for survival. “Pag sa malayo parang 3D,” he explains. “Pero pagtingin mo flat lang, normal lang. ‘Yong iba nga hindi makita. Tapos sabi nila abstract lang ‘yan.”
“The title, ‘Thou Shall Not Steal,’ is rooted in the word of God,” he says. For Cobcobo, making art is an act of prayer: “In printmaking, there is always an element of surprise. Hindi mo alam ang kalalabasan. When you mix it into canvas, hindi mo alam kung anong kalalabasan—God gave me this idea. I prayed hard for this, and the answers are through his voice.”
Being shortlisted also hit the artist with both humility and pride. “Marami kasing mga Filipino na gustong ma-nominate dito,” he reflects. “Being part of these three nominees is very flattering. Am I deserving of this? That’s always at the back of my mind. But I’m overwhelmed and proud to represent the country, and more opportunities will come. Nakakataba ng puso.”
Josephine Turalba: The weight of the deep
Transdisciplinary artist Turalba works across performance, installation, experimental video, tapestry, photography, and painting—a nomadic practice tied together by a singular obsession to express the sociopolitical narratives and personal mythologies that shape a volatile world. She has exhibited at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 and various international Biennales, while currently serving as director of the Artistic Research Center at the Philippine Women’s University and a Research Fellow at the MIT Future Heritage Lab.
Turalba’s nominated work, “The Cables She Wears,” combines media such as acrylic paint, stitched scrap leather, an embedded 12-gauge shotgun head, and .38-caliber brass bullet casings. The materials result in a luminous, tactile seascape. In it, hybrid sea creatures drift through deep water threaded by a single, persistent internet cable, which she calls the “spine of our digital world.”
“During the painting process, a vocabulary of technical terms was inscribed directly onto the canvas,” Turalba explains. “Signal, interference, corridor, submerged leaks, deep link, transmission, transatlantic, backhaul, and latency… naming the invisible systems that sustain our global connections but remain hidden from public view.”
“In the Philippines, the sea is never just scenery, it is part of everyday life… At the same time, daily life now is also shaped by digital connection.” Through her work, she reflects on the internet “not as something abstract or up in the cloud… It runs through cables laid across the ocean floor, so the sea ends up carrying part of the burden of our connected lives.”
From a fish-like being that “clutches a plug without understanding what it triggers” to an octopus-like mother figure that draws from the Bagobo figure Mebuyan, her leather body punctured by bullet casings. Turalba, a diver since she was 12 years old, has seen how sea life adapts to its environment. “I imagine how these creatures live with the cable as if it belongs there, like a new kind of reef they must navigate,” she says, bringing awareness to “our desire for connection” as “a permanent part of the marine habitat.
“The work asks us to view the sea not as a void, but as a living neighbor,” she adds.
For Turalba, the shortlist references a long arc of practice, “of making, thinking, and evolving… Recognition like this feels meaningful not only because of the prize itself, but because it places the work in dialogue with a broader field of contemporary practices in Asia.”
Alvin Zafra: Etching time into rough ground
Zafra has spent over a decade developing one of the most distinctive material practices in Philippine contemporary art. Working on sandpaper, he etches found objects directly onto its abrasive surface, which vary from bones, steel, bullets, knives, stones, and glass. His work has been shown in Manila, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Poland, and Germany, with inclusions in the Yinchuan Biennale in China (2016), the Mediations Biennale in Poznan (2012), and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2009). He was also a recipient of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award in 2015.
The nominated work, “A Turn of Events,” emerged from his solo exhibition “Burgundy Street” at Artinformal last year, which drew from photographs Zafra took of the city he resides in. It was the last piece made for the show and took the longest. It depicts ruins, which he describes as “inhabited by agitated lines, a contrast to the realistic drawing of a building.”
He calls this “Para-Figuration… an approach where photorealism and abstraction are both present in one work,” saying, “It is no longer a commitment to what the camera sees, but more to what I feel.”
Zafra’s method, a technique he coins “object/medium,” demonstrates his thinking on the relationship between art and audience. “My sandpaper drawings are my reaction to traditional art-making techniques… I feel that oil and acrylic paints, at times, can alienate the audience. Using objects has been my way of bridging the gap between art and the viewer… My medium is not external to the image; it is continuous with its subject.”
Ultimately, the Sovereign shortlist for Zafra signals something larger than personal recognition. “Being a finalist is an award in itself, and I am humbled… I hope my art will reach more viewers and take part in the conversation of image-making.” He cites how the proceeds will be channeled to the foundation’s charitable causes, noting that “Helping disadvantaged children’s needs through art is a powerful gesture. Art can heal in a myriad of ways.”
The shortlisted works will be exhibited to the public from April 24 to May 3 at H Queen’s in Hong Kong and from May 12 to 15 at Phillips Asia. A Public Vote Prize runs alongside the jury selection, with the Grand Prize winner, the Vogue Hong Kong Women’s Art Prize recipient, and all other winners to be announced on May 19, 2026.
The public may vote for the shortlisted work at the physical exhibitions or online via the Sovereign Art Foundation’s website
