Strongly influenced by the folk and ethnic cultures of the Philippines, Santiago Bose directly incorporated indigenous materials, symbolism, spirituality and social concerns into his practice, along with a range of art-making techniques and aesthetic sources gleaned in the course of his nomadic life. Bose was particularly concerned with asserting the richness and relevance of native cultures and human rights in the face of European and American cultural hegemony, and with connecting art to broader communities and their struggles. In addition to performance and installation, Bose produced a rich body of two-dimensional work that used the pictorial plane as a space of cultural collision, making frequent use of collage, layering and pointed symbolism.

The artist book Lies, magicians and blind faith was created over a period of seventeen months, which included a visiting research fellowship program at Southern Cross University, Lismore. Bose burnt contour lines with a magnifying glass on paper to produce compositions with explanatory texts about mystical practices and remembered incidences in Baguio, his hometown in the mountainous Cordillera region of the Philippines.