Kristone Capistrano

Kristone Capistrano is a Filipino-Australian artist working across traditional and experimental drawing, moving image and performance. His practice explores mortality, transience, and contemporary figuration, visualising paper as a metaphor for human skin, and mark-making as a form of human touch: a vehicle for generosity and care. 

In a world of increasing AI and automation, Capistrano creates works that are decisively tactile, handmade and analogue. His early practice was driven by a fascination with the human person: their voices, faces and silent gaze. He wanted to create portraits with a solidity that could not be “swiped” away; faces rendered slowly by hand, calling the viewer to stop and behold the face of another: Look at me. I am here. I am waiting. This impulse has expanded beyond portraiture into landscapes, dance, animation and durational performance, where drawing becomes a way of returning to touch, labour and embodied attention within an increasingly screen-based world. 

The death of his grandmother led him to start using Filipino brooms and household tools as alternative instruments for drawing. A homage that unites mark-making, sweeping and erasure with shared memories of labour, sacrifice and hospitality embedded within the Filipino imagination. Across these works, drawing becomes a way of holding what passes: a tactile act of mourning, devotion and care. 

Capistrano has presented solo exhibitions and commissions in Australia and Asia including Movement Study: The Bridge, Kingston Arts (2025), 101 Graham Street, PHIVE, City of Parramatta (2022), and a forthcoming permanent public artwork for the new Bradfield Metro Station (2027). His moving-image work Orb: Anima was recently named winner of the White Rabbit Gallery’s Digital Art Call-Out Program. He has undertaken residencies at Bundanon Art Museum (NSW), Emerging Islands (Philippines), Tong Lau Space (HK) and the Sheen Center (NYC) with awards including the Black Swan Prize for Portraiture, the Royal South Australian Portrait Biennale and the Blacktown Local Artist Prize. 

Upcoming projects include Loss:Non:Loss, a two-person exhibition at Airspace Projects, Sydney; Bevel, a series of drawing performances for Wrong Institute at the Vargas Museum, Manila; and a solo exhibition at Art Cube Gallery, Manila.