Leonardo Aguinaldo (b. 1967, Baguio City) is a Benguet-based artist whose practice is inseparable from the highlands that raised him. Known for his masterful carving on wood and rubber, he transforms these humble materials into striking relief prints and mixed-media works that feel both ancestral and contemporary. His pieces function as vivid ethnographic records-reverent yet unafraid to be satirical-capturing the cadences of local life, the humor folded into everyday customs, and the quiet spiritual worlds that hover beneath Cordilleran culture. His deep immersion in community life continues to be the force that animates his work. In doing so, he creates art that is not merely about place, but from place: textured with memory, weighted with meaning, and anchored by the people whose lives he honors. Today, he remains one of the most distinctive voices in Northern Luzon’s contemporary artscape. His works serve as a bridge between past and present, local and global, personal and communal-holding space for a people’s story, carved with both tenderness and truth.
