Imelda Cajipe Endaya: Reimagining women, art and society

When you walk through the National Gallery Singapore’s latest exhibition, Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise, it’s impossible not to be struck by the quiet insistence of Imelda Cajipe Endaya’s work. 

A co-founder of the feminist art collective KASIBULAN in 1987, Endaya has spent decades reshaping the way women’s lives are seen, felt and imagined in the Philippines — and now, in Singapore for the first time, audiences can trace the full scope of her practice.

Endaya’s art is both intimate and political. Across printmaking, painting, collage, and mixed media, she transforms ordinary experiences into acts of reflection and resistance. She places women at the center, not as passive subjects, but as active participants navigating the social, cultural, and political landscapes of their lives. Whether exploring domestic spaces, labor, memory, or identity, her works quietly assert that the personal is inextricably linked to the collective. 

Her journey has never been solitary. Beyond her own artistic practice, Endaya has nurtured communities, mentored emerging artists, and fostered dialogue around gender, social justice, and the power of creative expression. The formation of KASIBULAN was not merely an act of organization — it was a statement, a collective declaration that women could reclaim space in the Philippine art scene and, through their work, challenge societal norms that had long silenced them.

In Fear No Power, Endaya’s contributions sit alongside other groundbreaking Southeast Asian artists such as Amanda Heng, Dolorosa Sinaga, Nirmala Dutt, and Phaptawan Suwannakudt. The exhibition is organized into three zones: Where the Body Thinks, Worlds Open, exploring personal and bodily experience; Refusal and Hope, where social and political engagement takes center stage; and Imagining Otherwise, highlighting collective action and community-building. In each zone, Endaya’s work resonates with a clarity born of lived experience — her art is an invitation to see the world differently, to imagine new forms of care, resistance and possibility.

“Imelda Cajipe Endaya shows us that courage does not always roar,” Horikawa Lisa, Director of Curatorial & Collections at the Gallery, said. “It can be a quiet insistence, a daily commitment to seeing and speaking truth, and a dedication to lifting others along the way.”

For visitors, Endaya’s works offer more than aesthetic appreciation — they are a lens into lives often overlooked, a testament to women’s resilience, and a reminder that art is not only about self-expression but about shaping communities, histories, and futures. Walking through the gallery, one can feel the echoes of her activism, her creativity and her belief in the power of women to imagine otherwise.

Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise runs from 9 January to 15 November at the Ngee Ann Kongsi Concourse Gallery, National Gallery Singapore. Entrance is free.