Interview The Kanto team
Images MADE 2025 and Marc Allan Jose
“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. Read on for our conversation with Special Citation Recipient Marc Allan Jose, who calls for recognition and change of the faulty public transportation system in the Philippines in his piece, “The Road You’ve Never Taken.”
You place a government official in the same cramped bus as commuters. What compelled
you to use that image as the central plea of the painting?
Marc Allan Jose: I am a big proponent of the idea that if we all simply took the time to understand one another, even just attempting to, it would be a major component of social change. Our government officials, whether by birth or not, and by means or not, are mostly individuals of a higher social class than the people they are governing. This leads to a major disconnect wherein they cannot see our struggles or do not care enough to even attempt to recognize them. I wanted to put them in our shoes, literally placing one of them in possibly the worst position, standing inside the dank, cramped vehicles we find ourselves in every day while they enjoy their twentieth luxury car.
I simply want them to have a taste of what it’s like to be us, in the hopes of reaching the still listening, human parts of their psyche.
The Rückenfigur technique makes viewers step into the scene themselves. How did you
decide that this perspective was the right way to deliver the work’s message?
The Rückenfigur technique was chosen due to my desire for the painting’s message to be universal. I once read this book by Schirato, “Reading the Visual,” wherein they argue that what’s unseen is just as, if not more important than what’s seen. So, I decided that since commuting was already a shared experience among the general Filipino populace, I might as well double down on this by allowing them to see themselves in the picture I painted.
Plus, it was also a convenient way to protect the privacy of the people I was painting.
The driver’s empty seat reads as both literal and symbolic. How do you see that absence
shaping the way people interpret the piece?
It could be interpreted in several ways, all of them correct, and some of them intentional on my part.
It could be the eventual disappearance of this vital system that’s keeping our nation afloat by moving workers, students, and officers to their destinations. In this case, it is a harbinger of what’s to come, the collapse of this societal cornerstone, or its perversion into something else.
It could also be a more political interpretation. Who is in the driver’s seat? Where are they taking us?
Submitting “The Road You’ve Never Taken” to MADE put an everyday struggle, commuting, on a national stage. How did that competition influence the urgency of your message?
I have long been studying the urbanization of our nation and life in the present and growing metropolitan cities for my thesis. When the MADE competition was announced, I decided to take the opportunity to enter for the sake of using art’s greatest purpose: as a narrative tool.
Receiving a Special Citation validates the political charge of the work. What role do you think art festivals like MADE can play in holding power to account?
Art is strongest as a medium for saying something, not mere decoration. But what use is a message that goes unheard? Especially in an Orwellian reality, the urgent truths often get drowned out by distracting slop. The MADE competition provides a platform for individuals who’ve something to say and reach a wide audience. And when the populace is touched by our messages, they are, in turn, charged with vigilance to keep societal figureheads in check.
All art is political, after all. •
