Seeds Sowed: In Memoriam of Brenda Fajardo

Brenda V. Fajardo, 1989, "Makaalis kaya si Huwan at Mariya Sa Ilalim ng Anino Ni Samuel Agila?", Tempera and Ink, (54 cm x 74 cm), Ateneo Art Gallery Collection

Homily delivered by Jason Dy, SJ
Arlington Chapel A, 5:30 PM, 20 September 2024

I had lunch with Tessa Guanzon, Alma Quinto, and Nathalie Dagmang last Saturday at the Jesuit Residence after the talk of Alma for the Arts 103, a course on Art and Community, at the Ateneo Fine Arts Department. Towards the end of our lunch, I served the dessert of a banana split with three scoops of ice cream (strawberry and pistachio) covered with Muesli, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream, and topped with a vanilla wafer. While enjoying their dessert, Tessa declared the passing of Ma’am Brenda Fajardo. The dessert must have tasted with a bit of sadness.

That sad day, 14 September 2024, was the feast day of the Exaltation of the Cross. A Christian liturgical feast honoring the cross on which Christ suffered and was crucified. In the depiction of Ma’am Brenda, the icon of the cross is devoid of its liturgical and theological meanings. In her ink-on-paper work entitled “300 Years of the Cross and Sword,” the cross rather comes with the sword referring to the institutional Christian religion patronized by Imperial Spain as part of the Colonial Movement represented by the friars and a guardia civil. On its sides, she depicted the characters in tarot-like fashion like Ang Gaga, Ang Papa, Ang Emperador, Ang Salamangkero, Ang Tore, and Ang Katatagan.

"300 Years of the Cross and Sword is the 2nd Fold", 14.5" X 21.5", ink on paper, Asian art now collection

On a personal note, I did not have a chance to meet Ma’am Brenda. I admire her works, especially the ones in the Ateneo Art Gallery collection like the 1989 tempera and ink entitled

“Makaalis kaya si Huwan at Mariya sa Ilalim ni Samuel Agila?” which questions the ongoing political alliance between the Philippines and the United States in a post-colonial era. Though our paths have not crossed, we have common friends from the UP Arts Studies and Kasibulan. The gift of being associated with the Manila art community, I’m also acquainted with some of their colleagues. As a priest, preaching in a homily gives me not only the privilege to honor the dearly departed, but also the responsibility of researching the person and her legacy.

When I visited the wake of Ma’am Brenda last Wednesday (18 September 2024) together with Mark Salvatus and Mayumi Hirano along with their son Yuji, I had a brief chat with Prof.

May Datuin. Prof. May and I were discussing the legacy of Ma’am Brenda. In the local art scene, legacy-making is also one of the factors that propel major donations to art institutions, major retrospectives, national allocates, and setting up estates/foundations. On a more existential level, because of inescapable mortality, fear of death, and anxiety over existence, human beings have left some marks to be recognized, remembered, and memorialized. 

However, for Ma’am Brenda, what was her legacy? Perhaps, not intentional, contrived, and monumental. But, as Prof. May and I agreed: more organic, self-effacing, and personal. I imagined her legacy as sowing seeds in others, in the PH art community, in her spaces, and relations of influence.

Photo courtesy of the Cultural Center of the Philippines

As we celebrate her person, life, and art, let me suggest three clusters of seeds she had sown in her life, namely, seeds of caring stewardship, seeds of creative magnetism, and seeds of critical engagement.

First, seeds of caring stewardship. As a major in Agriculture at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPLB CA Los Baños), Ma’am Brenda cultivated a keenness of the earth and a sensitivity to its tillers. In her praxis at Hanao-Hanao, a maternal family hacienda in Bago City, Negros Oriental, she explored art and cultural work through diversified programs like transforming some areas into vegetable plots, fruit trees orchard, and medicinal herbarium as well as art initiatives like “folk dancing, folk songs and games, community theater, working with clay, papermaking, storytelling, weaving, and other workshops in an effort to enrich and enliven community life” (B. Fajardo, “Art as Cultural Work and Community Collaboration: The Hanao Hanao Experience, p. 72).

As a caring steward, Ma’am Brenda in her article “Art as Cultural Work and Community Collaboration: The Hanao Hanao Experience,” admitted the benefits and difficulties of caring for the people in the hacienda for their environmental awareness, artistic development, and cultural appreciation. She concluded her essay:

Gains have been evident in widening the cultural perspectives of the people, but art and cultural work for communities are difficult processes amidst the concerns of daily life. Nevertheless, it needs to be an ongoing process because there are non-tangible values in the arts that need to be experienced by as many people as possible. So far, the initiative have been sustained through time with networking and imagination. (B. Fajardo, “Art as Cultural Work and Community Collaboration: The Hanao Hanao Experience, p. 75).

I surmise that the community in Hanao Hanao is the living testament of the legacy of Ma’am Brenda of the seeds of art and cultural engagement that she sowed in their persons. They in turn are the stewards of the land, bearers of their culture, and carers for their community.

Secondly, Ma’am Brenda sowed the creative magnetism. The idea of creative magnetism was informed by the testimony of one of the junior faculty members of UP’s Department of Art Studies. She said that Ma’am Brenda was like a force field that attracted her inner drive to pursue her best as a teacher and art historian. In a way, she has a positive energy to influence the altruistic aspects of people.

Prof. May shared with me that during the office of Ma’am Brenda she was recruited to be part of the faculty, now called the DAS. Though Prof. May was not sure if her skills as a BS in Communication Arts would qualify her to teach and pursue a career in the arts, Ma’am Brenda encouraged her. She told Prof. May that her abilities to write and do research were sufficient skills needed. Prof. May testified that the trust that Ma’am Brenda afforded her made her realize her potential as a cultural worker, curator, and art critic.

Like Prof. May and the Junior faculty, I’m sure each one of you has your own experiences of being drawn to the charisma of Ma’am Brenda. This creative magnet of Ma’am Brenda is her commitment to arts and culture. As curator Patrick Flores observed, “From her early dreamscape prints to her recent Tarot Card Series, Fajardo displays a vigorous commitment to her art, cultivated through her roles as cultural worker, grassroots organizer, art teacher, theater artist, and curator” (P. Flores, “Laying the cards of a changing historical memory,” artprojects.tripod.com, online).

We attest therefore that Ma’am Brenda had scattered the seeds of creative magnetism not to attract people to herself, but more so to emulate her commitment to arts and the culture of our people. She did not mentor people in a master-disciple paradigm. Like in her Tarot Cards, the participants are not ill-fated with their predetermined history. Her mentees, students, and followers were given the opportunity to lay down their cards and to actively shape their destinies. As Sir Patrick noted in the dynamics of her Tarot Cards: “She spreads out the full deck of possibility and chance. Ultimately, however, the artist can only herald the truth that fortune is not written in the stars, but is actively read and made in the cards of changing historical memory” (P. Flores, “Laying the cards of a changing historical memory,” artprojects.tripod.com, online). Thus, when we continue to pledge ourselves to the growth and development of the arts and culture of our country, we take part in the legacy of Ma’am Brenda.

Baraha ng Pilipino 1", coloured ink on paper, 2018 (Photo: Courtesy of Tin-Aw Gallery)

Lastly, the seeds of critical engagement. As one of the co- founders of Kababaihan sa Sining at Bagong Sibol na Kamalayan (Women in Art and Emerging Consciousness), more popularly known as Kasibulan, Ma’am Brenda contributed to the community of women that renegotiated the role of women in art, culture, and society. In an interview, Ma’am Brenda affirmed the various perspectives that her colleagues Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, Julie Lluch, Anna Fer, and Sister Ida Bugayong contributed to better see the context of women’s issues.

“With varying perspectives, we get a chance to see women’s issues from different vantages, not just from one’s own,” Fajardo said. “Being influenced by one another’s works and understanding issues holistically are enriching experiences in Kasibulan,” Lluch added. (My emphasis, Franz Sorilla IV, “Herstory of Kasibulan, a sisterhood of women arZsts,” tatlerasia.com, online, 8 March 2023).

Her critical and self-reflexive engagement with women and their issues together with the Kasibulan founders and members is an important shared legacy. Together they championed the cause of women’s emancipation from patriarchal systems and empowered them to express themselves and contribute to the larger society given their strength, beauty, and potential. When I look at the series “Baraha ng Pilipino 1”, coloured ink on paper, 2018, I see several folk depictions of women and their virtues. There are three striking characters for me. One is “Ang Gaga,” depicting a fool holding a rose towards the sun. She may be a fool but not easily fooled. Like in plays and literature, the fool, in the end, is the wisest, for she holds the wisdom that no mere mortals possess. The second is the Babaylan seated in an interior space, either holding her ritual book or amulet. In the background is a banana plant with five leaves, the fifth one is falling and wilting. Here the Babaylan is the medium between different worlds, enacting the ritual of reconciliation, healing, and peace. The last one is Katatagan—an image of a woman in strength either wrestling with a fierce lion or nursing a tame cub. It is an icon of the power of women that both confront the threats and nurture the threatened.

Tonight, we celebrate the life of Ma’am Brenda, honor her life and passion, as well as remember the seeds that she sowed in us, in art, culture, and society—the seeds of caring stewardship, seeds of creative magneZsm, and seeds of critical engagement.

Ma’am Brenda, you were able to sow these good seeds because you were good soil that allowed the Divine Sower to sow these seeds in your heart. In your next journey, we hope that these seeds will indeed yield a hundredfold.

Notes:

Fajardo, Brenda. “Art as Cultural Work and Community Collaboration: The Hanao Hanao Experience,” in Locus: Interventions in Art Practice (Manila: NCCA, 2005): 72-76.

Flores, Flores. “Brenda Fajardo: Laying the cards of a changing historical memory,” in At Home & Abroad: Contemporary Artists exhibition catalog, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1998, available in <https://artprojects.tripod.com/fajardo.htm>.

Sorilla IV, Franz. “Herstory of Kasibulan, a sisterhood of women artists,” tatlerasia.com, online, 8 March 2023, available in < https://www.tatlerasia.com/lifestyle/arts/herstory-of-kasibulan-a-sisterhood-of-women-artists>.