Wawi Navarroza is a Filipina lens-based artist recognized for her vibrant large-format photographic tableaus and self-portraits, which comment on the plurality of identity, photography, and place.

Informed by material history, post-colonial dialogue, globalization, and her experiences as transnational, female, Southeast Asian, and Filipina, Navarroza creates multi-layered in-studio bricolage with camera and lighting techniques that unapologetically reclaim the heritage of polychrome in Oriental art. Navarroza's visual language emphasizes the often-overlooked power of symbolic allegory and folk memory through her rich lexicon of crisscrossing cultural references and riddles. Her work serves as a testament to the various facets and stages of the woman's narrative, underlining woman as world-maker and active participant in history. She champions textiles, interiors, and "women's work" in her materials and uses her own corporeal body as an artistic medium, underlining sovereign self-representation and agency through self-portraits—revealing the female artist not just behind the camera, but bravely in front of it.

With more than two decades of art practice primarily using photography, she has witnessed—not once, but several times—the paradigm shifts of this ever-changing field, with its triumphs, challenges, and difficult positions in contemporary art discourse. Alongside this, mirrored by a body of work that charts a call-and-response to the artist's own crests and troughs, Navarroza chose to abide by the medium and transform with it.

Recently, she received the prestigious Alexander Tutsek Stiftung Photography Grant (2025) and was Runner-up for the Objectifs Singapore Women in Focus Art Awards (2025). Other awards include the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship Grant, New York; the Lucas Artists Fellowship Award for Visual Arts, San Francisco; and national awards such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines' Thirteen Artists Award and the Ateneo Art Awards, as well as a nomination for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award.

Navarroza's works are in the collections of The Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the International Center of Photography (New York), the Lumi Photography Museum (Finland), the Central Bank of the Philippines, the Metropolitan Museum of the Philippines, the Ateneo Art Gallery, Menarco Vertical Museum, Monsoon Southeast Asia, the Ayala Art Collection, and the Akeroyd Collection (HK/UK).

She has been exhibited internationally in museums including the National Gallery of Singapore, the National Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan), the Fries Museum of Contemporary Art & Museum Belvedere (Netherlands), and the Danubiana Museum (Slovakia), as well as in galleries in the USA, Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, London, Spain, Italy, and Russia. Her art has been surveyed in books such as Photography Today (Phaidon), Contemporary Photography in Asia (Prestel), and Photography in Southeast Asia by Zhuang Wubin (NUS Press).

Navarroza is also a staunch advocate for photographic education and visual literacy. She has served as lecturer, educator, masterclass workshop teacher, and juror for several national awards and international festivals. She is the founder of THOUSANDFOLD, Manila's first photobook library and a platform for contemporary photography education and support for emerging Filipino photographic artists (2015–2020), and a co-founder of FOTOMOTO PH, a non-profit for the promotion and exhibition of Philippine photography (2021–ongoing). She has published two artist books and is often invited to speak on photography and visual culture. Navarroza is a graduate of De La Salle University Manila, with continuing education at the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York, and a Master's in Contemporary Photography from Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), Madrid.

Wawi Navarroza is currently based in Manila, Philippines; previously in Madrid, Spain, and İstanbul, Türkiye. She is represented by Silverlens Gallery (Manila/New York) and Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (London/Berlin/Palm Beach).