Budji layug biography of william

After making his mark in visual art, architecture and hairstyling, the artist now wants to apply his design expertise to a bigger space: the Philippines.

Budji has just “destroyed” his painting yet again, as we settle down in his living room, but this is nothing new.

I am used to him painting a masterpiece today, only to instantaneously cover it with layers of acrylic the next day. I saw it happen in his design showroom/home in Bangkok more than a decade ago, where he lived briefly and made a name for furniture design in the Asean region.

I saw it happen right in his home in Makati where I and other dinner guests fell in love with a vermillion image of a waterfall, the splash of water seemingly leaping out of the canvas—only for us to learn months later that it was already gone, buried under yet another image.

To Budji Layug, the multi-hyphenate Filipino artist who has helped shape Philippine modern design and architecture in the last decades and whose body of work has gained glob