Imelda Cajipe-Endaya (born 16 September 1949) is a Filipino visual artist, curator, author, activist, and community leader. She is known for her printmaking, painting, mixed-media art, and installation art. She is also an author of various texts and books, as well as the co-founder of Kasibulan, an artist collective in the Philippines. She also initiated the Pananaw Philippine Journal of Visual Arts, of which she was the first editor. Imelda Cajipe-Endaya has become a main figure Filipino feminist and national liberation movements and Philippine art. Her advocacy of women centers around Philippine history and culture.
Early life and education
Cajipe-Endaya was born in Manila, Philippines. Her father, Dr. Pedro M. Cajipe was a survivor of the Bataan Death March, while her mother Felipa Baisas (a daughter of Francisco E. Baisas), was a pharmacist and chemistry teacher. Cajipe-Endaya's work emerged from the period of ferment during the 1960s and 1970s in the Philippines. It was a period characterized by the socio-political upheaval and awakening in response to the declaration of martial law in the Philippines and as a result of the Vietnam war and a succession of economic crises. This can be seen to have greatly influenced both her art and her involvement in the women's and people's liberation movements in the Philippines.
She attended the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in Quezon City, Philippines where she earned a BA degree in advertising art in 1970, and studied art history and criticism in 1976 to 1977.
Career
In 1976 she produced a series of prints related to contemporary identity in the Philippines, which she named "Ninuno".
After graduating college, she was involved mainly in the production of calligraphy and etching, influenced by artists such as Benedicto Cabrera and Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi. In 1979 she was awarded the gold medal in printmaking from the Art Association of the Philippines in 1979. She began oil painting in 1981. Two years later she produced a painting named "Pasyong Bayan" ( A Nation's Passion), which she describes as expressing the "people’s rage against the human-rights violations perpetrated by a dictatorial regime that resulted in the loss of our democratic freedoms".
Cajipe-Endaya had a part-time job as an archival researcher and writer while starting a family. Her print exhibition in 1979 earned her critical acclaim. In 1980, Imelda Cajipe-Endaya was rated one of the best ten printmakers by a panel of critics. In 1987 she co-founded "Kasibulan", a women artists' collective, and served as its first president. She exhibited in the Philippines and abroad, curating major exhibitions of her own, and leading innovative initiatives as an organizer, cultural worker and writer. In the 1990s, Cajipe-Endaya began working in acrylic, and received a number of awards including the special award from the Cheju Korea pre-Biennale in 1995, the Araw ng Maynila Award for Painting in 1998 and RP Centennial Honors for the Arts in 1999. From 2005 to 2009 she lived in the United States with her husband Simplicio, an economist and project consultant. She was a recipient of the Orange County Arts Federation of New York award in 2005 and 2006 and the American Society of Contemporary Artists (Asca) award in New York City in 2009. In 2017 she produced a large mural entitled "Upheaval", which she describes as "necessary in liberating the people from current social ills" and as a sort of self-transformation.
Cajipe-Endaya has also published a number of books. In January 2016, the book "Alter/(n)ations: The Art of Imelda Cajipe Endaya", a compilation of articles by six important women in her life and their perspectives and desire for female equality was released.