Art as devotion: Imelda Cajipe Endaya’s creative practice as lifelong advocacy

Imelda Cajipe-Endaya’s artistic practice unfolds at a different tempo. It is quiet, rigorous, and unwavering.

Born in 1949 in Manila, where she continues to live and work, Imelda’s career has long been shaped by contemporary social issues viewed through the lens of women’s empowerment.

Across decades of practice, she has addressed cultural identity, human rights, migration, family, reproductive health, globalization, children’s rights, environmental concerns, and peace — concerns that emerge not as abstract themes, but as lived realities.

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Imelda’s art develops a visual language that is Filipino and distinctly womanly, blending personal narrative, cultural memory, and social commentary into each piece. [Photo from Silverlens Gallery: *Buhay ay Romansa Komiks* (left) and *Tutol ni Dolorosa* (right)]

Moreover, her mixed media paintings and installations are richly colored and densely textured, incorporating crochet, lace, textiles, windows, flatirons, suitcases, papier-mâché craft, and found objects drawn from domestic life and popular culture. Through these materials, she has developed a visual language that is distinctly womanly and unmistakably Filipino.

In an exclusive interview with adobo Magazine, Imelda spoke not as an artist chasing immediacy, but as a votary — one devoted by vow — to a lifelong practice where artistic discipline and social commitment are inseparable.

Imelda has devoted her artistic career to exploring contemporary social issues through the lens of women’s empowerment. Her richly textured mixed-media works — layered with textiles, found objects, and everyday materials — also tackle topics including cultural identity, migration and human rights.

For Imelda, her work is not a succession of isolated projects, but an enduring act of devotion to women, migrants, and marginalized communities.

“I continue to be devoted to art practice, to my art practice,” she said.

Her devotion is etched on copper plates, soaked in acid, layered through labor, and measured in uninterrupted hours. To be a votary of art, for Imelda, is to submit to this demanding rhythm daily to allow discipline itself to become a form of belief.

“Printmaking demands devotion. It’s an indirect process — from drawing, to exposing the plate to nitric acid, to building textures. It’s repetitive, and you can’t complete any work without spending about eight uninterrupted hours a day working.”

Votary practice as ethical responsibility

Imelda returns to the idea that devotion carries ethical weight. The vow is not only to the act of making, but to the people her work is made with and for. When asked how she sustains ethical accountability in relation to the communities central to her practice, she said it requires rigor and continuous growth.

“I have to show my peers and younger artists that I am really dedicated — doing excellence, pursuing excellence, and always exploring something different, something new that I have not done in the past. Even as the issues around me change, my points of view will, of course, adjust,” she explained.

Prints hold a special place in Imelda’s artistic journey. Art Fair Philippines 2026 celebrates the evolution of her printmaking across decades, highlighting some of her work such as *Dahil sa iyo, Marcos* (right).

Furthermore, Imelda, who co-founded KASIBULAN, a collective of women artists that challenged dominant narratives in the local art scene, and “Pananaw: Philippine Journal of Visual Arts,” an initiative that helped foster sustained dialogue around contemporary art, underscored that excellence is inseparable from responsibility. Her devotion is not static or nostalgic, but living and responsive, expanding as social conditions shift.

Imelda’s votary stance becomes most evident when she speaks of art not as a sequence of projects, but as a way of life.

“It is a total commitment day to day. One has to work every day, with a good direction of pursuing excellence,” she noted.

Art as an advocacy

Speaking to adobo Magazine, Imelda also reflected on why her work consistently centers on women, migrants, and marginalized communities, resisting framing that these are chosen “themes.” Yet, these ideas stand as an advocacy rather than a representation.

“It’s inseparable — making the work and my own womanhood, my artistry, my being a citizen and being of service to the community. It’s inseparable.”

This inseparability defines her votary position. Her art does not stand apart from her life; it extends from it. It is embedded in how she exists as a woman, a citizen, and an artist with acts of solidarity grounded in lived experience.

Looking forward

Imelda’s devotion is also future-oriented. For younger artists navigating a rapidly digitized landscape, she emphasizes the importance of material engagement and historical awareness.

Titled, “A Votary Art,” Imelda showcased works made through a mix of etching, collagraphy, aquatint, silkscreen, and dye-resist processes — vivid abstract compositions that play with color, shape, and cultural motifs along with cerebral works that reflect on Filipino identity and history in the Art Fair Philippines 2026.

“It is important that young artists continue to work with their hands, continue to research, go back to the basics — research by hand, looking at archives, not just digital AI. And to be very conscious of what happened in the history of our country, so we know where we come from and how to move forward well.”

Indeed, her devotion becomes resistance. As Imelda implied, being a votary artist today means committing to memory as much as to making. Art becomes a vessel for collective remembrance, linking personal narratives to broader histories.