Lizza May David is a painter/multidisciplinary artist interested in gaps and silences in personal and collective archives and experiments with forms of activation or disturbance through abstract painting. She navigates through affects and moments that elude representability, leading to experimental approaches for the very same reason. She does not assume the existing binary simplifications of the world, but rather thinks relationally in crossroads, turning points, overlapping and branching out, finding further expression in collaborations, architectural interventions or installations.

Lizza May David (born in Quezon City, Philippines) lives and works in Berlin and studied at the AdBK Nuremberg, the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon (France) and at the Universität der Künste Berlin. 

Vita
1996-2001 Freie Grafik / Malerei und Objektkunst (Klasse Rolf-Gunter Dienst), Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg
1999 Austauschsemester, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon, Frankreich
2001-2008 Medienkunst / Visuelle Kommunikation (Klasse Maria Vedder), Universität der Künste Berlin
seit 2023 Dozentin im Fachbereich Freie Kunst/Bildhauerei, weißensee kunsthochschule berlin
seit 2025 Vertretungsprofessur für Freie Malerei und Kunstpädagogik, Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg

Grants (selection)
2024 KUNSTFONDS_Stipendium | Stiftung Kunstfonds 
2022 Neustart Kultur | Stiftung Kunstfonds
2014-16 Stipend program | Graduate School for the Arts | Berlin University of the Arts
2014 Global Exchange Grant | Berlin Senate Cultural Affairs Department
2011 Travel grant | Berlin Senate Cultural Affairs Department
2007-08 NaföG grant (Landesgraduiertenförderung des Senats Berlin)
2007 DAAD (travel grant in combination with NaföG) 

Solo exhibitions (selection)
2020 Bahala Ka [What do I know?] | Kunstverein Hildesheim | DE
2020 Untitled Painting #1 – ∞ | 1335mabini | Manila | PH
2016 Mangrove | Galerie Michael Janssen | Berlin | DE
2015 Umwelt | Galeria Duemila | Manila | PH
2014 Artist Unknown | Cultural Center of the Philippines | Manila | PH
2008 The Model Family Award | Galerie Metro | Berlin | DE

Group exhibitions and screenings* (selection)
2025 Platz machen! | Nursing the Empire (mit Donna Miranda) | Wiesbaden Biennale | DE
2025 Close To Home | Savvy Contemporary Berlin | DE
2025 As We See Us: A Decolonial Salon des Refusés | Mental Health Art Space | Berlin | DE
2025 Geschichten, die wir uns vorstellen, Geschichten, die uns verbinden | Kunstverein Langenhagen | DE
2024 Forgive Us Our Trespasses | House of the World Cultures | Berlin | DE
2024 Galeria Duemila | Manila | PH
2024 MATRIX II: Women artists from the Collections of the Ateneo Art Gallery and Ambeth R. Ocampo | Ateneo Art Gallery | Quezon City | PH
2024 Out of the Box 3: Traces of Interest | ifa Gallery | Stuttgart | DE
2024 Narben der Erinnerung | Museum Reinickendorf | DE
2023-24 Snare for Birds | Ateneo Art Gallery | Quezon City | PH
2023 Snare for Birds | Alfredo F. Tadiar Library | San Fernando | La Union | PH
2023 Last Laugh | nationalmuseum | Berlin | DE
2023 Prussian Palaces. Colonial Histories. Biographies and Collections | Charlottenburg Palace Berlin | DE
2023 Snare for Birds | Ang Panublion Museum | Roxas City | PH
2022-23 Beyond Nuclear Family: Home Sweet Home | EFA Project Space | New York | USA
2022 Beyond Nuclear Family: Recipes for Happiness | Display Gallery | Prague | CZE
2022 Chains of Interest | ifa-Galerie Berlin | DE
2022 Spheres of Interest | ifa-Galerie Berlin | DE
2022 Die Vibration der Dinge | 15. Triennale Kleinplastik Fellbach | DE
2021-22 Transition Exhibition | Brücke Museum | Berlin | DE
2021 RESIST! Die Kunst des Widerstands | Filmforum NRW im Museum Ludwig Cologne | DE*
2021 Routes of Empathy | Haunt | Berlin | DE
2020 caring structures | Kunstverein Hildesheim | DE
2020 NOT VISUAL NOISE | Ateneo Art Gallery | Manila | PH
2019 Motions of this Kind: Propositions & Problems of Belatedness | Brunei Gallery at SOAS | London | UK
2018 VIVA EXCON 2018 | the Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference | Roxas City | PH
2018 PRECURSE | Park Place Gallery | New York | USA
2018 Bastards of Misrepresentation - Planet Merde | Galerie Melike Bilir | Hamburg | DE
2018 Paintings must be meaningful | Pinto Art Museum | PH
2017 SCOPE:Pingpong | Space Ppong | Gwangju | KOR*
2017 SONIC SOUNDINGS | VENICE TRAJECTORIES | Venice | IT
2016 Never Shown on Purpose | Circle1 | Berlin | DE
2016 Abortion of Cute | 8.Salon | Hamburg | DE
2016 Don´t Panic It´s Organic | Galerie Zimmermann-Kratochwill | Graz | AUT
2016 Electric Bulalo: Painting in Exile | Vinyl on Vinyl Gallery | Manila | PH
2015 UGAT-AGOS | NON Berlin | DE
2015 STOP LOOK LISTEN | 1335mabini | Manila | PH
2015 Exoten-AdAptation_AdOption | WARP | Sint-Niklaas | BEL
2015 Contemporary Transnational Journeys and Liaisons | Metropolitan Museum of Manila | PH
2014 They have come to escort me on the dangerous pathway of the intermediate state | Power Station of Art | Nikolaj Kunsthal | Copenhagen | Denmark and Power Station of Art | Shanghai | CHN*
2014 Die Ästhetik des Widerstands | Galerie im Turm | Berlin | DE
2014 Brave New Worlds | Metropolitan Museum of Manila | PH
2014 Die Ästhetik des Widerstands | IG BILDENDE KUNST | Vienna | AUT
2013 YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT | Ateneo Art Gallery | Manila | PH
2012 Rebus New York | Emely Harvey Foundation | New York | USA (with Global Alien)

Talks and other activities (selection)
2025 Upcoming: Panel discussion | Balikan Symposium - Shared Stewardship and Ethical Returns for Philippine Collections
| University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
2025 Panel discussion | Sincerely Me | Mousonturm Frankfurt
2025 Painting Workshop | Reclaiming Narrative and Ancestral Connection| Filipinx Festival Vol. 2. Berlin
2024 Artistic Associate Editor | Street magazine: Arts of the Working Class | FOREIGNERS EVERYWHERE Issue #31
2024 Workshop (together with Kimiko Suda and Sunju Choi) „Asian-diasporic perspectives on decolonial memory
culture“ | Dekoloniale Erinnerungskultur Berlin
2024 Artist presentation and Panel discussion | Moving (in) Constellations. Artistic Interventions as Institutional Transition
| Freie University Berlin and House of the World Cultures
2024 Mentor | Transcultural Academy | State Art Collection Dresden
2024 Artist presentation | KuK-Tuesday S3: Dislocation & Object Lives | Technical University Berlin
2024 Artist presentation | Tales of the Diasporic Ordinary. Aesthetics, Affects, Archives | Humboldt University Berlin
2023 Artist presentation | Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect | Ludwig Maximilian University Munich
2022 Artist talk | Out of the Box | ifa Gallery and Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig
2021 Lecturer | Routes of Empathy | Burg Giebichstein Kunsthochschule Halle
2020 Initiator, Organizer | Engaging Colonial Archives: Artistic and Digital Humanities Interventions on Philippine Material
Culture in German Collections | together with Philippine Studies Series | Humboldt University Berlin
2019/2020 Lecturer | Planetary Perspectives | Stiftung Universität Hildesheim
2017 Artist talk| House of Memories | GLASMOOG Academy of Media Arts Cologne | Cologne 
2015 Initiator, Organizer | panel discussion | Philippine Studies Series Berlin | „Moments and Gestures: Capturing
Subject and Gender in Philippine Cinema” | Graduate School | University of the Arts Berlin
2014 Lecture | Soongshil University | Seoul | South Korea
Since 2020 Jury Member and consultant for institutions f.e. Stiftung Hygiene Museum Dresden, State Art Collection Dresden, 
Goethe Institute Manila, Stiftung Preußische Schlösser & Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg and the Federal State of Berlin

Publication and mentions (selection)
2024 PHD Thesis by Christina Ayson Plank, 'Counter-Productivity as Resistance: Contemporary Art of the Filipino Labor
Diaspora, University of California, Santo Cruz
2024 The Art of Partially Knowing by Yuanwen Zhong in: Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld 
Transcendences, House of the World Cultures
2024 Academic Journal - The Philippine Women‘s University: Sabangan
2022 Lizza May David: BAHALA KA, Editors: Nora Brünger & Fiona McGovern, Universitätsverlag Hildesheim
2019 „From L to E: Working with Archival Contingencies Lizza May David and Eva Bentcheva in conversation“, Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art
2016 Lizza May David: the canvas & the monkey, Kerber Verlag
2016 „No new kind of duck“, diaphanes Verlag
2016 Journal „The Unknown Filipina“ in Les Carnets du BAL #7, Oct 2016
2012 The Unknown Filipina in UNFIXED: Photography and Postcolonial Perspectives in Contemporary Art