Kalaw Ledesma Foundation Inc.

Arianna Mercado

Arianna Mercado is an aspiring curator who recently completed her studies in BFA Art Management from the Ateneo de Manila University. She aims to contribute in art education in the country with the use of curation and art criticism.

Prize Winning Essay
Dalena’s Curtain Call

Joyce Roque

Joyce Roque is a freelance writer and real estate broker finishing her MFA in Creative Writing at De La Salle University while majoring in creative nonfiction. She has worked in media and publishing in Manila and Shanghai, China.

Prize Winning Essay
Transits of Meaning

Pristine L. de Leon

Pristine L. de Leon graduated Magna Cum Laude, with a degree in Communication and a minor in Literature at the Ateneo de Manila University. She has been involved in publishing for two years and worked as an editor for luxury and lifestyle publications. She has written articles on art, fashion, and design, as well as profiles on various individuals leading the country’s creative industry. While working for a luxury jewelry brand and writing pieces on design, she now maintains a regular column on art and culture for The Philippine Star.

Prize Winning Essay
Exploring Lopez Museum’s political cartoons and the pleasures of resistance

Carlomar Arcangel Daoana

Carlomar Arcangel Daoana is the inaugural winner of the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism of the Ateneo Art Awards in 2014. The following year, he received the Metrobank Foundation-Alice Guillermo Award for Art Criticism from the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence. As a poet, Daoana has authored four collections of poetry, with Loose Tongue: Poems 2001-2013, published by the UST Publishing House in 2014, as the most recent. He received First Place and Second Place honors in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in the English Poetry category with his collections, “The Elegant Ghost” (2012) and “Crown Sonnet for Maria” (2013). A regular columnist in the Arts and Culture section of the Philippine Star, he teaches at the Fine Arts Department of Ateneo de Manila University.

Prize Winning Essay
Loss as impetus of discovery

Other Articles
Through her archives, a portrait of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma and her times

Lara Acuin

Lara Acuin is a graduate student at the University of the Philippines Diliman under the Araling Pilipino program. She teaches part-time at the De La Salle College of Saint Benilde and San Beda College Alabang. She lives in Las Pinas with her partner husband, Rolf, and their daughter, Amianan.

Prize Winning Essay
‘Lakas ng Loob’: Reintroducing Cesar Legaspi

Dominic Zinampan

Dominic Zinampan is currently taking up Art Studies at the University of the Phiippines Diliman. His research interests include transgression, film theory, and experimental music. He hoards books and plays in a couple of bands in his spare time.

Prize Winning Essay
“Chambers of Reflection”: A Critique on Mark Justiniani’s Reverb

Call for Applications: Art Criticism Writing Workshop 2026

Shots in the Dark: Fragments of the Ecological Conversation in Derek Tumala’s Phantom Limb