Western Sydney artist Marikit Santiago has won the $80,000 La Prairie art award, which will see two of her works join the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW) collection and send the artist to Europe in June for a residency that will include time at Switzerland’s prestigious Art Basel international art fair.
A three-time Archibald Prize finalist, Santiago’s work is inspired by her Filipino heritage, and her paintings frequently centre on family life. For the acquisitive prize, which was founded in 2022 to celebrate Australian female artists, the AGNSW has chosen A Seat at the Table (Magulang) and A Seat at the Table (Kapatid) to join its collection. They portray two generations of Santiago’s family; her parents and her sister.
The works also feature marks made by Santiago’s three young children, who are credited as artistic collaborators in much of her work.
“The works are an intimate invitation to my family’s dinner table,” the 38-year-old artist said. “We actually do gather at the dining table every Sunday night – we call it FDN, family dinner night.”
Santiago’s lush and detailed-filled paintings, created with oil paint and gold leaf as well as everyday materials such as cardboard and felt tip markers, blend scenes of domestic life with mythic, religious and cultural symbolism. AGNSW’s senior curator of contemporary Australian art, Beatrice Gralton, described the paintings as “a love letter to her family, her culture and Australia”.
Santiago said the works celebrate the migrant experience and her parents, paying tribute to the sacrifices they made when they left the Philippines for Australia. “When I was a kid I resented being Filipino because I stood out from my peers. Only in adulthood have I learned to accept and understand my ethnic identity,” Santiago said.
“I worked with Filipino beauty queens and celebrities and political figures when I first started painting, but it wasn’t really working,” she said. “I found my strengths are in the autobiographical. I can make a really powerful image when I know the subject deeply – and that’s my family.”
She described her work as “defying preconceptions around what women from Western Sydney are like, or what Filipinos as migrants should do. If I’m going to defy expectations then I need to represent myself and my family.”
Santiago is a rising star in the art world. After studying at the College of Fine Arts (Cofa, now called UNSW Art and Design), she won the 2020 Sulman prize for a painting of her children, and in 2022 held her first institutional solo exhibition, For Us Sinners, at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney. Her solo exhibition Marikit Santiago: the Kingdom, the Power has recently closed at Bendigo art gallery.
For her residency in Europe, Santiago said, “I want to go to the Uffizi in Florence, to see first-hand the Renaissance figurative paintings that inspire me, the Botticelli. Not just the technique but the way women are depicted throughout history; they are always fair skinned and for the male gaze. Those are the things I want to challenge.
“I would also like to travel to Madrid to see the churches. The Philippines were colonised by Spain and I’m interested in the architecture.”
Before pursuing an art career, Santiago completed a bachelor of medical science at the University of New South Wales.
“It was a childhood dream to be a paediatrician, but I knew early in first year that I wouldn’t continue on into medicine. My parents encouraged me to complete the degree and then do whatever I wanted,” she said.
“I really only went to Cofa to see if I was good enough. I think I have a God-given talent – I was just born with this talent – but I didn’t know if it was good enough, and I didn’t want it to go to waste. Art school showed me that art can be a viable and important career; [it showed me that] art is where a lot of important social movements started, and that I am good enough.”
Santiago said she couldn’t have a full-time art practice and raise three children without the support of her husband. “Sometimes people recognise me and my family from the paintings and they congratulate my husband, thinking he is the artist. I find this very, very amusing. I am the artist. But I couldn’t do any of this without [him].
“It frustrates me that he has to be the one with a stable career so I can be an artist. I feel guilty that he carries that burden. But he has never given up on me so I share this award with him.”
Santiago is the third recipient of the annual award, which was granted to Sydney-based artist Thea Anamara Perkins in 2023 and Melbourne-based artist Atong Atem in 2022.
Santiago’s works A Seat at the Table (Magulang) and A Seat at the Table (Kapatid) are on display on as part of the Making Worlds exhibition at the AGNSW’s north building until 28 July.
