Sagaynon visual artist Kennette Luague has been named the 2026 grand awardee for the Featured Medium: Mixed Media category of the Metrobank Art & Design Excellence (MADE) competition for his work “Taya (Bet)”, bringing another national arts recognition home to Sagay City.
The Metrobank Foundation announced Sept. 18 that Luague is among the seven artists recognized in this year’s competition, which honors emerging Filipino artists working in painting, sculpture, and mixed media.
Luague, who grew up in Brgy. Maquiling, Sagay City, has been creating art since childhood, beginning with drawing, painting, and sculptures made from materials available to him. He later joined local and national competitions while developing his practice as a visual artist.
His winning work, “Taya”, measures 91.5 centimeters by 91.5 centimeters by 6.5 centimeters and combines wood, epoxy, oil paint, billiard cloth, and a bearing on a wood panel.
At the center of the work is a laborer surrounded by a roulette-like wheel — a visual metaphor for workers who continually stake their strength, time, and physical labor in the hope of securing a better life.
Drawing from his own experience as a manual worker and from the tradition of social realism, Luague uses “Taya” to examine the limited choices often faced by Filipino workers.
The work suggests that while perseverance keeps a laborer moving forward, the cycle can also resemble a gamble in which hard work does not always guarantee security.
The subject is closely connected to Luague’s own family and working-class background.
In an interview following his MADE victory, Luague said his father worked in construction and that he frequently worked alongside him, experiences that influenced both the materials and ideas behind “Taya”. He initially trained largely in oil painting but pushed himself into unfamiliar media such as wood, metal, clay, epoxy, and cement for the work.
Luague said creating the piece also involved repeated experimentation.
His original concept called for a sculpted human figure mounted on a rotating circular structure, but weight and balance problems led him to carve the figure directly into wood instead.
The technical challenge eventually became part of the meaning of the work itself, a piece about labor that also required persistence, trial and error, and physical effort from its maker.
For Luague, the rotating circle represents the world surrounding the worker and the uncertainty that accompanies everyday survival.
He described his MADE entry as a significant “leap of faith” in his artistic development, moving away from the materials and approaches with which he had become comfortable and allowing himself to explore a broader visual language.
This year’s MADE competition carried the theme “Traverse: Creativity in Motion”, which Luague said reflected his own period of artistic exploration and growth.
The Metrobank Foundation opened the 2026 competition to painting, sculpture, and mixed media, continuing a program that began in 1984 as the Metrobank national painting competition before eventually becoming MADE.
Under the 2026 competition guidelines, each grand awardee receives P500,000 worth of prizes, composed of a P350,000 cash award and a P150,000 artistic development scholarship at the Eskinita Art Residency Program.
Grand awardees also receive the “More” brass trophy designed by artist and former MADE awardee Juan Sajid.
For more than four decades, MADE has served as a national platform for emerging Filipino artists, and has counted among its previous awardees prominent contemporary artists, including Elmer Borlongan, Mark Justiniani, Leeroy New, Alfredo Esquillo, and Andres Barrioquinto. ||
