The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

....., THE PHILIPPINES BRENDA FAJARDO Top and bottom 52.5x72cm (each) Cards of life - Collection: The artist Women's series 1993 Pen and ink on handmade paper 2 sheets from a series of 9: Brenda Fajardo was born in 1940 in Manila, the Philippines. She first studied painting at the Philippine Women's University, then completed a Master of Science in Art Education at the University of Wisconsin, UnitedStates. She nowworks in graphic arts, art education, art management, art criticism and performing arts. Brenda Fajardo is a founding member of the Philippine Art Educators' Association which specialises in developing creativity in children. She is also a founding member of the Philippine Educational T heater Association (PETA) and has been involved in both acting and stage design for the association. Recently, she founded BAGLAN, an organisation dealing with art in community development. She is also a professor and former chairman of the Department of Art Studies of the College of Arts andLetters, University of the Philippines. Alongside of these activities, Brenda Fajardo has continued to work in printmaking and painting and has won several awards for her art. Her early prints in etching and aquatint had a surreal character full of personal 34 symbolism. Her work has gradually moved away from classical influence in figure­ drawing towards an expressionist and later folk figurative style. T he figuresof theTarot cardswith their folk idiomand bright, flat colours have inspired a series of coloured-ink paintings, 'Cards of life', in which the artist lays out and 'reads' Philippine history. T he Tarot characters, from the royal figures and theprinces of the church to the fool and the hanged man, all suggest contemporary counterparts. Recognition brings humour, irony and pathos; in the confluence of history and contemporary politics there are figures that strongly refer to recent events, such as the EDSA [Epifanio de los Santos Avenue] uprising with its expectations. Beyond the traditional figures, there are people's warriors, men and women from the different periods of history, tribal Filipinos, Muslim Filipinos, and the rural folk. Brenda Fajardo is concerned with a definition of the national identity that involves Filipinos of all classes and ethnic groups. Likewise, a distinct feminist orientationemerges from the wide variety of women figures resisting feudal stereotyping. It is the nationalist viewpoint central to her art which has transformed the world of the Tarot from the non-historical to the historical, from the arbitrary to the realm of human responsibility. To convey these themes Brenda Fajardo has developed a style of vividly coloured figures, hues, applied flatly and in high saturations, combinedwith gold accents as in medieval illuminations - a style which has assumed a distinctly personal quality in the course of the series - with the figures becoming more spontaneous and supple, well suited to the narrative impulse. In some works she has brought out contrasts between colourful Tarot sections and central sections in sepia, portraying marginalised social groups. Hers is a continuing quest for meaningful art arising from the dialogue with the exigencies of form. Alice Guillermo