Sydney-based Filipina-Australian artist Marikit Santiago has won this year’s $80,000 La Prairie Art Award with a lush and deeply symbolic work focusing on a favourite theme: the importance of family.

The twin paintings, executed on reclaimed cardboard and featuring marks from her three children, depicts Santiago’s parents and the artist herself with her sister, seated at the family dining table.

“Every Sunday night, unless we have a clash, we gather at my parents’ place and we have dinner together,” says Santiago, a three-time finalist in the Archibald Prize.

“My dad always sits at the head of the table. That’s always his spot so I’ve placed him there. Seemingly, he does hold that patriarchal role, but my mother stands behind him to signify within the micro community of a family, we know really who runs the show.”

Santiago and her sister are depicted with a python between them. The snake’s ability to shed it skin refers in part to Santiago’s “new life” in Australia. Her parents moved here before she was born.

“We’ve been raised in Australia and that has allowed us the opportunity to choose whatever we want,” says Santiago. “We didn’t really have to sacrifice anything. I firmly believe that my parents’ migration to Australia has eventuated in this opportunity for me to be a full-time practising artist and raise a family.”

Having a foot in two cultures is another recurring theme, particularly coming to terms with the truth that she does not have to “choose”.

“When I was younger, I just longed to be accepted as an Australian,” she says. “But my name’s Marikit, I have brown skin, my parents are migrants. I can’t escape that. Only fairly recently as an adult I’ve learned to accept my ethnic identity and accept that it’s OK to feel different things about all of my cultures. I think as a kid I thought you had to pick one. You’re either Filipino or you’re Australian. I picked Australian, but I feel like Australia didn’t pick me back.