Bagtas clinched the top prize at the 2019 GSIS Art Competition with his piece, Happiest Place. Bagtas said that it was at that point where he finally found and mastered his signature style today of abstract expressionism where he also utilise the tedious pointillist technique. Having received well by the art community, and most especially by his family, Bagtas feels proud and sincerely happy with who he is today as an artist and dreams to continue this path from here on in.

The ongoing health crisis plus its effects on our economy, natural environment, and political landscape are what inspired Bagtas to create his winning entry at the MADE competition. Driven by his strong faith in God, he expressed his deep spirituality into his art to signify hope amidst the discouraging events happening around us.

He titled it as Between Heaven and Earth as he thought that we have all been levelled equally by the pandemic and altogether share the urge to seek comfort from God—“live a second chance” as Bagtas phrased it. Using cellular imagery in dazzling, vibrant colours as a representation of people from all walks of life facing and fighting COVID-19, Bagtas expressed his own unique visual language to convey “happiness despite of sadness, love despite of hatred, and prosperity despite of hardship.”

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Kathleen Dagum, born in Sultan Kudarat, began her personal discovery in art when she started drawing at a very young age and aspired to be like Fernando Amorsolo. But due to inaccessibility to an art school in her hometown and a series of failed attempts when she moved to Metro Manila, she felt discouraged and backed away from the life she dreamed of and returned to Mindanao to become a schoolteacher. With the burning passion for the arts lingering in her heart, she went back to the capital to try again her luck. She passed the talent test of University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman and was able to pursue art studies. Though the money was not stable for a budding artist like her at the time, she has found happiness and fulfilment from being able to express her thoughts and emotions through her art.

Now back in Mindanao, she shared that one reason why she joined MADE was to push herself harder as an artist and not rest on what she has achieved so far. She credited this thinking to one of her most influential teachers, Jonathan Olazo, who believes that artists should not rest on their laurels and continue exploring their artistic styles. Dagum also shared that the works of Yeo Kaa, another past MADE winner, inspired her to continue mastering the discipline of sculptural art. Moreover, she also found resemblance to Kaa's struggles as a budding artist whose works are not usually being taken serious by the public. Finding her own artistic identity and infusing it with her Mindanaoan heritage are also few of Dagum's concerns as an artist but looking at Toym Imao, one of the most prolific Filipino sculptors today from Mindanao, she has found the motivation to do so. With her sculpture installation, Bungkag, she earned the top prize in the Sculpture Recognition Program. 

Dagum's works have been usually influenced by her observances to the socio-political environment and her opinions on the society. Hence, she identifies herself as a social realist in art. Also, creating three-dimensional artworks for Dagum are much more exciting and fulfilling for Dagum than is drawing. Using and manipulating the human figure for the Mindanaoan artist has made her more engrossed in the discipline of sculpture where she has limitless possibilities of angles to express her commentaries to socially relevant issues.

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Timing and maturity are the two key things Dagum credits as shapers of her Bungkag piece. While the world was at the height of the pandemic in 2020, she came at a crossroad where she was contemplating to pursue her artistic career or not. Although she is used to doing whimsical sculptures for children audiences, she had this inspiration to try creating something with a deeper meaning, hence evolving her artistic style on a bigger scale.

Bungkag is Dagum's commentary on the suppression of a manipulative system over the people, as inspired by her work in an organisation that helps the rural poor in the mountains. With the title being the Cebuano word which means “to break apart into constituent parts,” the sculpture captures her vision through a dynamic collection of children on a swing moving inharmoniously with each other, never achieving collective action and unity. The collective piece also gives the impression that it is defying gravity, thanks to the magnificent balance of tension and compression components, as well as the ingenious concealment of the supporting structure. But more than that, it renders Dagum's sentiment that “if the system persists in this [kind of] control of the state, growth is stagnant and opportunity is not equal. Caging people might crumple them but it will not take too long for the system to collapse.”

Another Bulakeño artist also won in the Painting Recognition Program, particularly in the watermedia on paper category. Lymuel Bautista shared that his fascination in the arts started at a very young age, from copying images from teks, which was a popular card game in the Philippines during the '80s up to the early 2000s. During high school, he joined his school publication as a sports writer but was eventually reassigned to be the editorial cartoonist because of his talent for drawing. This pushed him to pursue fine arts at the Bulacan State University.

He finds inspiration from his mentors Renato Habulan and Alfredo Esquillo and other past MADE winners like Borlongan and Justiniani, who have pushed him to think outside of the box, explore different mediums, and tackle relevant themes in their works, and make truly sensible and socially aware masterpieces. 

Bautista shared that in their local arts scene in Bulacan, he found that most artists share the same style. This propelled him to try new techniques like warping his works to add a unique effect. With this, Bautista felt home with surrealist art but he does not forget in highlighting social realities through his subjects.

Resourcefulness and creativity, for Bautista, are the most important things he has learnt over the past year. Having been forced to stay in Tarlac due to erratic quarantine restrictions, he has not been home for a long while now.

Being in lockdown with limited materials and reliable artist-friends, Bautista resorted on peculiar mediums for his art, most significantly the galvanised iron that he used to add a desirable depth effect on his paper. The artist realised that the experience was a blessing in disguise, that he might not have won if he was with his usual materials in Bulacan.

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His Haunting Wail of Chaos is Bautista's commentary on the events that have occurred simultaneously with the pandemic. This includes the passing of the Anti-Terrorism Law, the constant “redtagging” on people with socialist views as communists or enablers of such groups, politicking, and inhumane dispersal of the urban poor that Bautista finds as untimely and irrelevant especially as we are in the midst of health and economic crises.

With the paper medium shaped like corrugated iron, the work presents a view of an inferno teeming with dogs. Some have already succumbed to their injuries as others continue to terrorise the pack. The work may be read as dog-eat-dog world, in which there is no cooperation, only competition and winner-takes-all mentality. In the midst of the dogs savaging those less powerful them, ticks, which represent the coronavirus, infect them.

The painting’s overall composition is hectic, disconcerting, magnificent in its chaos. The rabidity of the scene is almost Biblical in its depiction of cataclysm, offering an unstinting view of human nature evoked more powerfully through the vehicle of an allegory. Despite the seeming helplessness of the scene, the artist believes that “the time when our freedoms are curtailed is not the time for fear and silence; it is the time for standing up.”

Bagtas, coming from a family of artists, finds art as a mean of livelihood. Winning in MADE has strengthened his dream to become a successful artist one day and opens the door for him for greater heights.

Dagum, on the other hand, sees art as a way to connect to the people. It is a visual form of communication that speaks for everyone's minds in lieu of words and voice most especially in communities with limited opportunities, as well as a historical recorder of society's culture and environment. For her, winning in MADE is a privilege to be among the ranks of the country's foremost artists today—deeming it as a family that supports and encourages one another.

Bautista meanwhile classifies art as his avenue to express his views and opinions, hence lifting him from the burden of being silenced by an oppressive system. His win for him is a validation of his perspective, echoing his sentiments with the hope that something will change for the better in our country. Just like the others, Bautista also came to a point last year of quitting in the arts industry but with this award, he said that it seemed he was given another chance to create meaningful artworks.

View the exhibition here

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