Piecing Together a World in Which We Can Dwell Again: The Art of Imelda Cajipe Endaya

Abstract

602 Feminist Studies 40, no. 3. © 2014 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Flaudette May Datuin Piecing Together a World in Which We Can Dwell Again: The Art of Imelda Cajipe Endaya Beloved, ever since you left My body and heart do not know where to go Slow is the flow of blood in my veins In these opening lines of an untitled poem by Gregoria de Jesus, the world is suddenly strange and unlivable.1 The writer—fondly called Oryang (or Oriang)—is remembering her husband Andres Bonifacio, leader of the Philippine Revolution against Spain, founder and Supremo (supreme leader) of the Philippine revolutionary society Katipunan, of which Oryang had been among the most active members. As the Lakambini (princess) of the Katipunan and widely acknowledged as one of the heroines of the Philippine Revolution, she performed dangerous tasks which only women can undertake undetected by the police.2 Although independence was won from Spain in 1898, Andres and his brother Procopio were arrested by rival revolutionaries, charged with treason, and executed, despite scant evidence. Oryang searched for their bodies for 1. The untitled poem in Filipino is in Encarnación Alonza and Gregoria Nakpil (de Jesus), Julio Nakpil and Philippine Revolution (Manila: Carmelo and Bauermann , 1964), 177la. An English translation by Teodoro A. Agoncillo of the University of the Philippines can be found at http://tl.answers.com/Q/ Tula_na_ginawa_ni_gregoria_de_jesus. 2. “Hero of the Philippine Revolution: Gregoria de Jesus,” Philippine Culture website, http://www.msc.edu.ph/centennial/gdjesus.html. Flaudette May Datuin 603 months and months, but failed to find them. In her poem, Oryang transfers the pain outside her body, relaying her inner state through language. Grief and suffering (dusa) are given form, disseminated, and shared, stirring the community to commiserate and take action (damay). In the words of Philippine scholar Reynaldo Ileto, damay thus becomes “a social experience, a Katipunan (collective) experience. Since damay is a manifestation of whole and controlled loob (inner sense), the Katipunan radiates heat and flame, just as Christ and other individuals of exemplary loob radiate liwanag (light).”3 The art of Imelda Cajipe Endaya exemplifies the aesthetics of damay, where, as in Ileto’s description of damay as “a social experience,” emotion becomes social and the social becomes emotional. In a parallel to Oryang’s experience, Cajipe Endaya’s work also transfers pain outside her body into her art and relays her inner state through art. Her work grew out of a period of ferment in the Philippines during the 1960s and 1970s. Graduating from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, she began her artistic career as a printmaker, pursuing an avid interest in Philippine history through her use of archival images, old prints, drawings, and photographs. From her first series of etchings and serigraphs in 1976, titled Ninuno (Ancestors), Cajipe Endaya exhibited an original approach to the theme of national identity, which she viewed with a historical sense. One work, Saan Ka Nanggaling, Saan Ka Darating? (Where have you been, where are you destined?) (1979), for example, poses questions that suggest the tensions that arise out of the uneasy encounter between colonial and indigenous cultures. The work traces the complexity of cultural change experienced by an indigenous woman and features aquatinted silhouettes, some shrouded and others erased, and strewn with native and Spanish scripts. In this and similar prints from that period, we see indications of the techniques that would be carried to full maturity: photo-transfer and cutting and pasting of figures that emphasize the flatness of the picture 3. Reynaldo Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines , 1840–1910 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979), cited in Patrick Flores, “Postcolonial Sufferance,” in Imelda Cajipe Endaya: Stitching Paint into Collage, ed., Patrick Flores, Flaudette May Datuin, Scott Koterbay, Ruben Defeo, and Elizabeth Lolarga (Manila: Lenore RF Lim Foundation for the Arts, 2000), 14, http://www.blurb.com/b/818947imelda -cajipe-endaya-stitching-paint-into-collage. 604 Flaudette May Datuin plane, even as they stand out of its surface. In her exhibit Paintings in 1981, a title that marks her shift from printmaking to painting, a similar set of tensions persist. The push and...