Imelda Cajipe Endaya’s personal story is repeated in the lives of so many women in the Philippines: she raised a family, provided care for an aging parent, and became part of the Filipino diaspora. At the same time, since the 1970s when she became a leading figure in the vibrant printmaking scene in Manila, she has created art that engaged in social commentary and worked as a curator, activist, critic, the founding editor of Pananaw: Philippine Journal of Visual Arts (first published in 1997), and author on issues of identity, power, feminism, and the plight of Filipina migrants and domestic workers. Over the course of her career, Cajipe Endaya has received multiple accolades, including the Cultural Center of Philippines (CCP) Thirteen Artists Awards in 1990; a CCP Centennial Honor for the Arts in 1999; and an Ani ng Dangal award from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) in 2009. Throughout, from her early struggles to her later recognition, she has maintained her advocacy for the arts: “We have a very big role to play in our small ways—we have to keep on working for people to be critical thinkers.”
Cajipe Endaya’s life spans the postwar history of the Philippines, in its social turmoil and persistent inequalities. Born into a middleclass Manila family in 1949, she graduated with a fine arts degree from the University of the Philippines in 1970 before returning to study art history and criticism in 1976. The mid-1970s were the height of President Ferdinand Marcos’s turbulent regime after the introductionwas more affordable than painting, which made it more attractive to artists like herself who were just starting out.
