Marikit Santiago Hallowed Be Thy Name (collaboration with Maella Santiago, Santi Mateo Santiago and Sarita Santiago)

Marikit Santiago’s personal compositions reflect her lived experience as a Filipina–Australian and depict her three children, with whom she makes the work and to whom she dedicates her practice.

Santiago has reframed biblical narratives, portraying herself as Eve and her husband Shawn as Adam, grappling with temptation alongside their children. This group portrait, Hallowed Be Thy Name, takes its title from a Christian prayer that begins ‘Our Father’. It is a response to her decision to change her children’s surname to her own.

‘My radical stance against this patriarchal custom has left me and my children in a precarious position,’ explains Santiago. ‘Wearing the traditional barong Tagalog dress of the Philippines, we are surrounded by foliage, and each child is holding their favourite, albeit deadly, Australian native animal and biblical symbol of sin: a blue-ringed octopus, inland taipan and saltwater crocodile.

‘In my garden of good intentions, evil lurks everywhere. Good deeds rarely go unpunished. In my quest to demonstrate to my children what is possible, perhaps they’re just inheriting my sins.’

A three-time Archibald finalist, Santiago won the Sulman Prize 2020 with a painting of her three children. Her daughter Maella Santiago is a finalist in the Young Archie 2023.