From the time that the Liongoren Art Gallery gathered eight artists in 1990 – namely, Ida Bugayong, Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, Brenda Fajardo, Lydia Ingle, Veronica Lim-Yuyitung, Julie Lluch, Nelfa Querubin and Arlene Villaver – the Walong Filipina as a local art event has gone a long way. From the confines of the gallery on New York St. in Quezon City during its early years, the program, which has become a traveling show, has been shown in galleries dotting the country.
The 1990 exhibit, however, was not the first time the Liongoren Art Gallery had shown works done by woman artists. The precursor of the Walong Filipina was the all-woman show presented by the gallery in 1986 through the prodding of Julie Lluch, shortly after the Edsa Revolution and upon declaration of March 8 as International Women’s Day. The milestone exhibit featured the works of Adiel Arevalo, Edwina Koch-Arroyo, Julie Lluch, Nelfa Querubin and Virginia Ty-Navarro.
To date, close to a hundred female artists have participated in the show representing virtually the female sector of practicing artists in the exhibition circuit today, from Pacita Abad (Batch 1991) to Phyllis Zaballero (2000). Through the exhibits, the Walong Filipina has showcased the multifarious art forms and contexts pursued by women today from painting to sculpture, from installation to performance art, fiber art, clay art, advertising and graphic design, craft, cuisine, fashion, dance, music, theater, poetry and literature, dissecting issues dwelling on patriotism, ecological neglect, authorship, gender and family values, among others.
The program made another date with history in 1998 when instead of female artists, the exhibit featured an all-male group paying homage to eight Filipina revolutionaries from the eight provinces which first revolted against Spain and which are now immortalized as the eight rays of the sun in the Philippine tricolor. The eight male artists included Adi Baens-Santos (Gregoria de Jesus of Manila), Jeho Bitancor (Aida Kahabasan of Laguna), Dansoy Coquilla (Lorenza Agoncillo of Batangas), Neil Doloricon (Gregoria Montoya of Cavite), Norman Dreo (Salome Siapoco Llanera of Nueva Ecija), Manny Garibay (Segunda Fuentes of Morong, Rizal), Tence Ruiz (Praxedes Fajardo of Pampanga) and Aro Soriano (Generala Trinidad Tecson of Bulacan).
This year’s outing is the 14th in the series. And once again, it is a singular exhibition, as it commemorates the centennial of the feminist movement in the Philippines.
It was on June 30, 1905, that early Filipino feminists led by Concepción Felix de Calderon formed the Asociación Feminista Filipina in Quiapo, Manila. Prior to the Asociación’s establishment, there was the Suffragist Movement that gained for Filipino women the right to vote and be voted upon. Still, Asociación Feminista meant there now was a definite focus on women’s rights for itself. The group was the forerunner of women organizations advocating feminist rights in the Philippines; the likes of the Liga Femenina de la Paz, National Federation of Women’s Clubs and Girl Scouts of the Philippines followed soon after.
Eight artists pool their artistic reserves together to celebrate the occasion, namely, Agnes Arellano, Ida Bugayong, Brenda Fajardo, Anna Fer, Gilda Cordero Fernando, Araceli Dans-Lee, Julie Lluch and Alma Quinto.
To make this year’s affair unique, a solo exhibition of works by Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, has been integrated, hence the title, Conversations on Juan Luna and Walong Filipina. This is Cajipe-Endaya’s 18th solo show.
As a young printmaker and student of Juan Luna’s Spoliarium (a contentious masterpiece allegory of Philippine society of 1884) in the 1970s, Cajipe-Endaya came across the discourse "Why Have There Been No Women Artists?"
Much has changed since then. Although the women’s movement has advanced women’s status, the need for a deeper dialogue and creative exchange remains. Tearing her old silk-screened images of the Spoliarium, she recomposed and collaged the images into re-interpretations of the personalities and art of the eight women artists of different backgrounds and persuasions.
The exhibit is a show of autobiographical reflections on the historical role of Filipina women artists. Cajipe-Endaya’s series of textile work and paper collages honor the lives and work of the eight woman artists, with whom she "recognized the sisterhood that has ensued one way or another."
It was Norma Liongoren who thought of approaching the eight woman artists to respond to Cajipe-Endaya’s collages. Thus, the featured artworks in Walong Filipina were created "to converse" with Cajipe-Endaya’s biographical collages. Each artist was asked to bring in new or existing works that would interact with her works.
Walong Filipina is made more significant by Conversations… in that the former sustains and elaborates on the visual and conceptual dialogue posed by the latter.
Apart from the eight women artists, Conversations… also pays tribute to Paz Paterno (1867-1914) who is the first Filipina painter to be given historical recognition; and to Pacita Abad (1947-2004) who projected the Philippines in the world map of contemporary art.
Conversations… is a discourse on feminism and art. Cajipe-Endaya’s own narrative shows how Filipino woman artists have continually strove to create testimonies of struggle and engagement in a male-dominated discipline of Philippine art.
The process of empowerment posed by a contemporary generation of celebrated Filipina artists is evident: The questioning of patriarchal hierarchies and conceptions of aesthetic value goes alongside the process of conversing and communing as women through images and forms.
Most of the artworks are autobiographical. Agnes Arellano and Julie Lluch’s are personal stories of pain and transformation done in life-casts. Araceli Dans-Lee’s fine watercolors of elite calados contrasted with images of decay betray her early struggles as artist/breadwinner. Brenda Fajardo’s painting reflected her life as mentor of the Hanao-Hanao folks of Bago City in Negros Occidental, while Anna Fer’s paintings and drawings are illustrative statements built up from her anthropological and social investigations. Ida Bugayong’s spiritual apostolate, even as she continues to maintain craft home industry, has helped empower women workers. Gilda Cordero-Fernando’s writings are wildly imaginative. Alma Quinto’s art of stitching colorful stuffed toys out of ancestral and indigenous forms is an effective way of helping abused girls turn hurt into joyful healing.
Cajipe-Endaya’s art, as she herself described, is also very autobiographical, emerging from her own "psyche, spirit and day-to-day activities and discover that the process is an empowering one not only for the self, but for other women."
Although a known advocate of women empowerment, Cajipe-Endaya emphasizes the exhibited artworks are not meant to pit women against men, even as they clearly showed the stark difference of the two sexes.
"These visual conversations are intended for us to understand ourselves and the opposite gender better… this is a bid for women artists to productively reach out to one another in an even stronger sisterhood towards and affirmative vision for all," she said.