Abdulmari Asia Imao, a native of Sulu, is a sculptor, painter, photographer, ceramist, documentary film maker, cultural researcher, writer, and articulator of Philippine Muslim art and culture.
Through his works, the indigenous ukkil, sarimanok and naga motifs have been popularized and instilled in the consciousness of the Filipino nation and other peoples as original Filipino creations.
His U.P. art education introduced him to Filipino masters like Guillermo Tolentino and Napoleon Abueva, who were among his mentors.
With his large-scale sculptures and monuments of Muslim and regional heroes and leaders gracing selected sites from Batanes to Tawi-tawi, Imao has helped develop among cultural groups trust and confidence.
He is a sculptor and painter who fused traditional Islamic design with Modernist patterns to result in vivid works that yearn for local color and the dream of a unified nation.
He persevered to unite an innate sense to continue the carving and painting traditions of his Tausug forebears with a more Modern sensibility that created abstracted patterns for sculpture and painting that combines these motifs with Cubism. In addition, Mari was one of few Muslim-Filipino artists who would work on the figurative genre in sculpture, which is often discouraged because of the Koranic strictures against the representation of human figures.
Alongside wood sculpture and painting, Mari also learned advanced brass-casting, creative sculpture, ceramics, and advanced photo-chemistry.
He calls these combined compositions the saribong, meaning the fusion of the sarimanok, pako rabong, and Islamic motifs such as the dome and crescent moon.