Biography
Brenda Fajardo is a painter, printmaker, community organiser and art educator whose practice began to take shape in the midst of the Marcos dictatorship, an era in which critics of the Filipino regime were consigned to detention, torture or disappearance. Drawing from folk and vernacular culture, mythology, precolonial mysticism and a working background in theatre design, her artwork reimagines the historical legacies of colonialism and the dictatorship. Among the founders of Kasibulan, a women’s collective established in response to the political turmoil of the 1980s, Fajardo also foregrounds feminist concerns and the female gaze in her paintings and prints.
Solo shows of Fajardo’s work include Baraha Sang Pangabuhi, Negros Museum, Bacolod, Philippines (2015), and Divination, Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Quezon City (2009). Among her group exhibitions are Stories Worth (Re)telling, Berlin Biennale (2020); Present Day and in Times Past, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2020); Cue from Life Itself, Metropolitan Museum of Manila (2020); Awakenings, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2019); Hakos, Tin-aw Art Gallery, Makati, Philippines (2018); 10th Gwangju Biennale (2014); and Women In-Between, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan (2012).
Her works are in the collections of the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; National Gallery Singapore; and Metropolitan Museum of Manila.
Fajardo has received the Gawad CCP Para Sa Sining, Cultural Center of the Philippines (2012); Centennial Award for the Arts (1998); and Thirteen Artists Award, Cultural Center of the Philippines (1992).
Fajardo co-founded the Philippine Art Educators Association (1967) as well as other cultural organisations, such as the KASIBULAN, and BAGLAN art initiatives for community development. She is Professor Emerita at the Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines Diliman, where she has been teaching since 1976.
She earned an MS in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA (1967). Born in 1940 in Manila, she currently lives in Quezon, Philippines.
SAF participation:
Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023)
