"Transformation is the only option,” writes curator Wire Tuazon in the 2009 Thirteen Artists Awards catalogue, in keeping the mission of art on track and genuine.

Transformation is reflected on the new works to be exhibited by the 13 artist-awardees at the Main Gallery (Bulwagang Juan Luna) and the third floor hallway (Pasilyo Guillermo Tolentino) of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) through its Visual Arts and Museo Division headed by Karen Ocampo Flores. Ocampo Flores and Tuazon had been recipients of the awards in 2000 and 2003 respectively.

On July 9, 2009, the 13 progressive, young artists will be formally honored and their group exhibition simultaneouslyopened. The exhibition will run until Aug. 16.

The Thirteen Artists Awards, a triennial program of the CCP, nurtures and promotes artistic excellence by recognizing progressive and innovative art. The innovators who comprise the 2009 Thirteen Artists Awardees are Buen Calubayan, Don Djerassi Dalmacio, Kawayan de Guia, Racquel de Loyola, Christina Dy, Patricia Eustaquio, Winner Jumalon, Raya Martin, Iggy Rodriguez, Don M. Salubayba, Jaypee Samson, Pamela Yan-Santos, and MM Yu. They were selected by a panel of jurors composed of Mark Justiniani, Lao Lianben, and Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez.

Legaspi-Ramirez expressed the challenge posed before the three judges. “The Thirteen Artists Awards is an award for work that is yet to be done, something that lies ahead of the awardees’ current practice rather than something they have definitively accomplished as in the National Artist’s lifetime’s worth of tangling with creative energy.”

The Thirteen Artists Awards is in honor of the pioneering group of the 13 Moderns in Philippine art, namely Victorio Edades, Galo B. Ocampo, Carlos “Botong” Francisco, Diosdado Lorenzo, Vicente Manansala Jr., Hernando R. Ocampo, Cesar T. Legaspi, Demetrio Diego, Bonifacio Cristobal, Jose Pardo, Arsenio Capili, Ricarte Purungganan, and Anita Magsaysay-Ho. The Thirteen Artists Awards started as a curatorial project of the CCP Museum in 1970 under its first curator, Roberto Chabet.