Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, in her own words
I never dreamed of this. I am happy, though humbled.”
At 77 years old (it was her birthday just on Sept. 16), Imelda Cajipe-Endaya has spent more than five decades making art weighted with matters of interest in Philippine life—cultural identity, human rights, women, work, migration, the environment, politics, peace, and history, often grounded by objects encountered every day. Now, she has made history herself.
Signed just last Sept. 1 through Proclamation No. 1414, Endaya was named the Philippines’ first female National Artist for Visual Arts, a long-awaited recognition for an award that has been overwhelmingly male-centered.
“I am just lucky, I guess, because in the past, I nominated Brenda Fajardo and Julie Lluch,” she humbly says. She also names Anita Magsaysay-Ho and Nena Saguil, two pioneering modernists who were overlooked, and Norma Belleza, who continues to make art at 87.
Then, with a bit of humor and frankness that makes it difficult not to chuckle, Endaya explains why she thinks women have historically been left out of the visual arts category.
“I look at the list of National Artists, and they are all men, because those in power who made the decisions were men,” she says. “Men have big egos and they are drinking buddies; it is easy for them to remember their compadre. The women don’t drink with them, so they are forgotten.”
The “Babaylan Feminist”
In an article by Alma Cruz Miclat, historian Fe B. Mangahas, who worked with Endaya on “Kasaysayan ng Ating Bayan: Ang Pilipinas Noon at Ngayon,” describes Endaya’s works as “not thunderous, but realistic; gentle but intense.” And as a woman, “she’s not only a feminist, but a ‘babaylan feminist.’”
For years, Endaya’s work has given power to the female experience. Born in 1949, she finished her BFA at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts and expanded her practice throughout the years, oscillating between printmaking, painting, mixed media, textiles, and installation, often bringing materials from domestic life into the gallery.
“I love textures, the touch of a third dimension, the contrasts and intensity of colors,” she shares. “I behold all these even as I work at home, whether I hold a paintbrush or a mixing spoon.”
Beyond her own practice, Endaya founded Kasibulan or Kababaihan sa Sining at Bagong Sibol na Kamalayan, with artists Fajardo and Lluch in 1987. “We exert efforts to bring women artists into dialogue for greater productivity and to make their art more visible,” she says.
She founded and edited Pananaw: Philippine Journal of Visual Arts in 1997, contributing to the critical discourse surrounding contemporary Philippine art. She also served in government, on the National Commission for Culture and the Arts Committee on Visual Arts from 1995 to 2001. At present, she continues to conduct lectures and art workshops.
Always paying attention, Endaya says, “It is an artist’s duty to observe the reality of his or her context, and to understand how the present is rooted in the past.”
The politics in the everyday
When it comes to her practice, Endaya always charges her work with layers of meaning.
Her early printmaking series “Mga Ninuno” (1976 to 1979) revisited colonial-era engravings to understand Philippine identity, referencing the Boxer Codex and the “Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Española y Tagala.” During the Marcos martial law era, works such as “May Bukas Pa, Inay” (1982) and “Daing ng Puso” (1985) addressed militarization, foreign intervention, and nuclear threats.
Then came “Filipina DH” in 1995. The installation was first exhibited when the cases of two Filipina overseas domestic workers, Flor Contemplacion and Sarah Balabagan, captured national attention. Contemplacion was executed in Singapore, while Balabagan’s case in the Middle East became a highly publicized story of a Filipina domestic worker fighting for her freedom.
A participatory work, she asked for donations of maids’ uniforms and battered maletas. “I hung the uniforms onto layers of clotheslines and projected onto them various images of mothers/mother surrogates and child, from colonial times to present,” she recalls. “I laid out personal mementoes of overseas housemaids, all executed in mourning black, onto domestic labor implements, the way ordinary Filipinos would hang personal icons and souvenirs in their homes.”
The exhibit created a memorial of sorts. And after three decades, it returned earlier this year to Silverlens Manila as “Kahapon Muli Bukas,” in a homecoming that brought renewed attention to both the realities and dignities (and suffered indignities) of overseas domestic labor.
To be free, art must be political
Endaya’s life and work has been marked by recognition decades before being conferred the country’s highest Order of National Artists award. In 1990, she received the CCP Thirteen Artists Award, followed by the Che-ju Pre-Biennale Special Award in 1995 and the CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts in 1999. In 2022, the Cultural Center of the Philippines mounted her 50-year retrospective, “Pagtutol at Pag-asa.”
But perhaps the most telling aspect about Endaya as an artist is that, even after all these accolades, she continues to look closely at the facts of life most people might overlook.
In Endaya’s hands, an ironing board can become a canvas of grief while a maid’s uniform can speak to a mother’s pain. Elsewhere, a print can raise questions of the Philippines’ colonially wrought identity, while a painting can make viewers remember the anxiety of the Marcos-era dictatorship. Many make statements on feminism and persistently embedded social inequalities.
“Though art itself cannot solve problems, it is a peaceful way of practicing political freedom,” she explains. “It is art’s function to unleash imagination and creativity, whether in joy or in rage, and to critically engage its viewers to seek solutions.”
More women at the table to follow
After more than five decades of practicing art as political freedom, Endaya has become part of the very history she has spent her life examining (although I’m sure she’s far too humble to admit that). “There should be more successful women artists after me,” she resolutely says.
It’s fitting that Endaya is the first female National Artist for the Visual Arts, as someone who has spent her life making space for those in the margins, and particularly for women’s perspectives.
“I hope that my paintings will inspire a worldview that we as Filipinos can trek the road we choose to our own advantage as a people and nation.”
PULL QUOTE OPTIONS
1 – “It is an artist’s duty to observe the reality of his or her context, and to understand how the present is rooted in the past.”
2 – “Though art itself cannot solve problems, it is a peaceful way of practicing political freedom. It is art’s function to unleash imagination and creativity, whether in joy or in rage, and to critically engage its viewers to seek solutions.”
3 – “I hope that my paintings will inspire a worldview that we as Filipinos can trek the road we choose to our own advantage as a people and nation.”
