JA Balaguer

JA Balaguer (b. 1991) is a digital artist, curator, and art critic based in Manila. His digital photomanipulations and compositions often evoke meditations on mysticism, esoteric knowledge, and new age spirituality using own photographs and stock images from the public domain to construct original compositions. His works reimagine familiar worlds as dream-like inscapes, oscillating between the fantastic and frightening, yet grounded in the artificiality of man-made technology. His works have been exhibited in Pineapple Lab, Cartellino Art, White Space Studio, and Ateneo de Manila University; and published in Heights, Stache, and Kanto. He was a fellow
in the first Ateneo Heights Artist’s Workshop (AHAW) in 2010 and received the Loyola School’s Award for the Arts for Illustration in 2012. In 2019, he received the Purita Kalaw Ledesma Award
for Art Criticism.

JA is currently taking his MA in Art Studies – Curatorial Studies at the University of the Philippines and has an AB in Communication – Film and Media Studies, and Minor in Creative Writing – Poetry from Ateneo de Manila University. He has worked as a cultural worker in art institutions including as manager of operations and research at Palacio de Memoria, curatorial writer & researcher and museum educator at Ayala Museum, and gallery manager at Archivo
1984 gallery. He currently contributes art writing and criticism to Kanto Journal and Art Asia Pacific Magazine.