Sanctuary: MADE 2025 Grand Awardee for Sculpture Maki Liwanag

“We believe that the growth of Filipino artists contributes to building a more vibrant and cohesive nation. Through MADE, we are committed to cultivating boundless spaces for expression, innovation, and lifelong learning so that our artists can continue to shape not just the country’s cultural legacy but also inspire new ways of thinking,” opens Metrobank Foundation president Phillip Dy.

Building on this vision, the Metrobank Art & Design Excellence (MADE) 2025 Awards celebrate a new generation of Filipino artists who dare to explore, innovate, and redefine the boundaries of contemporary art. With the theme “Boundless Art,” this edition not only honors exceptional talent but also reintroduces the Mixed Media category—a nod to the pioneering spirit of the 1984 to 1987 editions.

Led by Toym Leon Imao, a multi-awarded artist and former MADE awardee, the distinguished jury reunited fellow former MADE awardees and contemporary art masters Leeroy New and Raffy Napay. The panel also included contemporary art market luminaries Frederick Flores and Geraldine Araneta, sculptor Reginald Yuson, and renowned curator Tessa Maria Guazon.

The winning pieces will be showcased in the exhibition titled Vast Horizons, the 41st edition of MADE’s tribute to the limitless potential of art. Running from September 19 to October 18 at The M’s North and South Galleries in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, the exhibit invites the public to see the program’s forward-looking evolution in the local art landscape.

Kanto conducted a series of interviews with this year’s seven awardees, inviting them to reflect on their creative journeys, personal philosophies, and the stories behind their winning works. Below is our interview with MADE 2025 Grand Awardee for Sculpture Maki Liwanag on his winning work, “Sariling Tahanan.”

Sariling Tahanan” ties personal memory to collective history. How do you decide when a story, especially one so rooted in family, is ready to take form as a public artwork?

Maki Liwanag: I guess the work did a lot with the decision.

I usually work beside an open window for better light source and that process unintentionally allowed my neighbors to see the work through the open window and begin asking about the work.

I think those kind of interactions that evolved into intimate conversations helped navigate the decision to a collective direction.

Your sculpture is made from the very materials of home-building. What does working with wood, metal, and concrete allow you to express that another medium could not?

Working with these materials allowed me to re-experience my childhood. From the scrap wood toys I used to build and repair, to a near-death experience after a bad fall from playing with a pulley system in a construction site. I guess these materials were suggested by those experiences.

You placed a figure on a muhon, separated from the ground. What led you to make that choice, and how do you see it imaging your ideas about home and belonging?

I think the choices made to create the work came from the desire to understand and attempt to resolve experiences of displacement.

I see the work reflecting my ideas of home and belonging as a transcendent moment or experience somehow.

What drew you to submit “Sariling Tahanan” at the MADE, and how did the competition shape the way you framed such a personal yet collective story?

I think it’s the curiousity to challenge myself and to know more about art.

The competition suggested ways to examine the interesting relationship between personal and collective story.

What conversations about home and belonging do you hope will grow from using this platform?

The idea of seeing ourselves as home. I hope this makes sense •