SLIM, frail, and self-effacing Imelda Cajipe-Endaya—printmaker, social realist painter, mixed-media and installation artist, curator, and art project organizer—has become the first woman to become a National Artist in Visual Arts in 54 years. The highest national recognition given to Filipino artists who made major contributions to Philippine arts and culture was established on April 27, 1972 through Presidential Proclamation No. 1001, with Fernando Amorsolo as the first recipient.
Although happy about receiving it for 2025, Meps, as Endaya is fondly called, has mixed feelings. Feeling humbled, she’s thinking of the eminent sculptor Julie Lluch and visual artist and educator Brenda Fajardo, who she said she had nominated for the Order of National Artist (ONA). The three of them, with illustrator Anna Fer and craftsperson and organizer of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate, Sister Ida Bugayong, founded Kasibulan (Kababaihan sa Sining at Bagong Sibol na Kamalayan /Women in Art and Emerging Consciousness) in 1987.
This women’s art collective, the first of its kind in the Philippines, was in a quandary over why women’s artworks were not very visible in the country. They found out that men and women doing arts were just equal in number, but the women kept to themselves and didn’t look for galleries for their works.
The five feisty women worked on the collective’s objectives to provide members with opportunities for creativity, growth, and self-sufficiency; to nurture and sustain sisterhood among its members; and to link its members to a larger community of artists and women’s groups here and abroad.
To date, only two of the Kasibulan founders, Meps and Julie, remain active as artists, while Anna Fer is not well. Two have passed away, Brenda in 2024 and Sister Ida, who, with her vow of poverty, continued to live among abandoned elderly street people up to her dying day, and was buried in an unmarked mass grave at a House of Mercy in Laguna.
The group which they founded, according to Meps, “is still very active, with artists who come and paint together, and they’re as old as my children and grandchildren.” Kasibulan was the one which nominated Meps, its founding president, for the ONA.
Imelda Cajipe-Endaya belongs to a rare breed of artists who combines art and scholarship, and is known for her art advocacy focused on women and centering on our nation’s history and culture. She initiated and became the first editor of Pananaw: Philippine Journal of Visual Arts, the first publication of its kind on Philippine art.
In 2022, over 200 of her artworks and archival materials on Philippine historical images done in a span of 50 years were exhibited in a retrospective titled Imelda Cajipe-Endaya: Pagtutol at Pag-asa (Refusal and Hope) at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ (CCP) Bulwagang Juan Luna.
The CCP exhibit was the first full-scale retrospective of “ICE,” as she’s called familiarly by her co-curators, Lara Acuin and Con Cabrera. CCP gathered in two years a treasure trove of the artist’s paintings from local museums and institutions and collectors, and from the collection of the artist herself. They are works that mirror her manifold advocacies dwelling on historical truth, cultural milieu, and social issues, especially on women.
In the CCP Retrospective, ‘Pagtutol at Pag-asa,’ Imelda Cajipe-Endaya and the author
After her 50-year CCP retrospective, her three curators recommended that she get a gallery to handle her collection. Meps says, “They and the Silverlens Gallery owners are of the younger generation who have worked together. I really am glad about this as a senior artist who can relate well with the young, and that my work is vibrant enough to appeal to young, avant-garde artists and audiences.”
‘The Wife is a DH Installation,’ 1995
Meps continues, “Silverlens team came to my studio and wanted exclusivity in marketing my work. I was happy to note their seriousness. How wonderful that very soon after, they gave me advance checks for four batches of work they committed to sell to institutions.”
Silverlens’ American curator, Eugenie Tsai, selected 10 of her works to exhibit in its gallery in New York last May 2025. The paintings in There is Still a Tomorrow, Mother, Meps’ first exhibition in New York in nearly 20 years, represent her pivotal works from the 1980s and 1990s. The Curator’s Notes: “The phrase ‘There is Still a Tomorrow, Mother’ encapsulates Cajipe-Endaya’s priorities of family, community, and nationhood. It advocates for the necessity of living with hope, courage, optimism, and faith that there will be a tomorrow in the face of all odds. Through her activities as an artist, mother, engaged citizen, and community organizer, she embodies a model for living that resonates more powerfully than ever in the current global landscape.”
At the opening of her 2022 retrospective
Two more exhibits were organized by Silverlens Manila early this year. Kahapon Muli Bukas was Meps’ second solo exhibition with the gallery from January 10 to February 14, 2026. The heartbreaking narrative of the exhibit is on the Filipina DH, which was first exhibited in 1995 at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), with the OCW (overseas contract workers) artworks of Jose Tence Ruiz and Egai Talusan Fenandez.
In the late 1990s, as part of an exhibition organized by Asia Society, Filipina DH was transported from New York to Vancouver to Bombay to Perth. It’s been 30 years since the first exhibit, yet the OCW story stays the same, as disturbing as before.
Another Silverlens exhibit at the same time was A Votary’s Art at the ArtFair 2026 at Circuit Makati.
‘Mga Babae sa Panahon ng Damuho,’ acrylic and textile on canvas, 2018
Apart from this, the National Gallery Singapore organized an exhibit of four Southeast Asian women artists, which opened January 16 and runs until November 2026.
Meps’ works are in the collection of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, CCP, Philippine National Art Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, as well as in the permanent collections of Singapore Art Museum (Lupa sa Aming Altar/Land upon my Altar), National Gallery of Singapore (Plantsahan ni Marra/2019—Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Sa Lupang Golgota /A Land called Golgotha), and Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum (Bigkis ng Pagkakaisa/Bond of Unity).
‘Pusong Wagas,’ acrylic, textile, and found objects on canvas, 2013
‘Self-portrait of an Artist as Babaylan,’ diptych, acrylic and polymer collage on canvas, 2013
Consistently exploring the themes of national identity and people empowerment, gender, race, migration, environment, displacement, and globalization in her artworks, Meps earned local and international recognition, such as the gold medal in printmaking from the Art Association of the Philippines in 1979, Mayi Critics’ Choice in 1980, CCP Thirteen Artists Award in 1990, Cheju Pre-Biennale Special Award in 1995, Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award from the City of Manila in 1998, RP Centennial Honors for the Arts in 1999, artist-in-residency at Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais, Switzerland in 1999, and awards from the American Society of Contemporary Artists in 2009, as well as the Ani ng Dangal from the NCCA in 2009. An art educator in the non-formal set-up, she conducts lectures and art workshops.
Church Café group at the Endayas’ home, wih Meps’ paintings on the walls
The conferment of the Order of the National Artist to Imelda Cajipe-Endaya was cause for jubilation for Kasibulan as well as our Bible Study group of artists, writers, and historians called Church Café, where Meps and husband Simplicio are also members.
Jenny Juan, French-educated member of Church Café, exclaimed: “She has broken another glass ceiling. The lingering force of her work comes from its images of organic nature—of trees, roots, snails and tendrils—that constitutes, if you will, the feminine power of Gaia.”
Julie Lluch, an ONA nominee and Kasibulan co-founder, says: “The conferment of the ONA on Imelda Cajipe-Endaya is a massive triumph for Philippine art that we have long waited for. The award is a vindication for all that she has fervently fought for as an artist, nationalist, and Filipina. Women artists, specifically we in Kasibulan women artists’ collective which Meps co-founded in 1987, celebrate this historic event with pride and joy. As a dear friend, colleague, and collaborator of long standing, I rejoice for Meps for this honor she richly deserves!”
Imelda and Simplicio Endaya with friends Roger and Fe Mangahas and Mario and Alma Miclat in a file photo
Meanwhile, multi-awarded publisher and writer Karina Bolasco says: “While euphoric over Meps’ National Artist award for 2025, I am also sad that only in the first quarter of the 21st century does a woman get this. And maybe she even almost did not, because I heard that in the last deliberations, three male visual artists were up for final selection. Despite that, we dominate the workforce, and most certainly the households. What are the stats? Our women make up 56 percent of potential workforce and 57 percent of total overseas work. For specifics: 60-88 percent of the academic and education workforce, 45-50 percent of the general arts, and 60-69 percent of the digital, graphic design, and other creatives online workforce.”
Karina concludes, “Yet, recognition of outstanding work, intellectual and creative, is hardly scratching the surface. I don’t know how and when will it ever keep up, or will it always be just occasional or seasonal? Only when some structure or space needs to be politically correct at some point in time?”
Kasibulan founders: Seated, Sr. Ida Bugayong, Brenda Fajardo; standing, Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, Julie Lluch, Anna Fer
That sentiment is also shared by Meps, who, even as she feels fortunate to be awarded, still laments: “Ang feeling ko nga, nasuwertehan ko, kasi nga I nominated Brenda, Julie…Tapos na-bypass naman ang nasa generation nina Manansala—si Anita Magsaysay-Ho, si Nena Saguil. Hindi sila nabigyan. Kasi mga lalaki ang nakaupo. Nariyan pa nga si Norma Belleza, buhay pa siya, mga 90 na yata siya, hindi rin nabigyan. Nalagpasan ko pa.”
Maybe, just maybe, in our time and age, the conferment of the ONA to the first woman in the field of visual arts may herald a new beginning. And hopefully, it will spread in all of the Seven Arts.
