Artist, educator Brenda Fajardo dies

MANILA, Philippines – Visual artist and university professor Brenda Fajardo passed away on Saturday, September 14. She was 84 years old.

Her passing was confirmed by relatives on Facebook, and by the University of the Philippines (UP) and Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) where she worked for many decades.

The UP Presidential Committee on Culture and the Arts (UP-PCCA) said that Fajardo is “acknowledged for her contributions to art education, Philippine theater, and extensive cultural work and advocacy.”

“As an accomplished visual artist, her works resonate with commentaries and narratives of struggle of the common man, colonial past, the plight of women, and socio-political history,” the UP-PCCA said in a statement on Facebook.

Fajardo was a professor emerita at UP College of Arts and Letters’ Department of Art Studies, where she taught for 35 years. She obtained her undergraduate degree in agriculture from UP Los Baños before studying art education as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Fajardo received her PhD in Philippine Studies from UP Diliman.

According to a profile at the Ateneo Art Gallery’s website, Fajardo also co-founded the Philippine Art Educators Association that conducts trainings and helps develop resources for art educators.

She was awarded the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining in 2012, recognizing not just her works that carry “strong historical and nationalist themes” but also for being “instrumental in founding or revitalizing artist groups bonded by a common advocacy.” Fajardo also received the Thirteen Artists Awards in 1992.

PETA, meanwhile, identified Fajardo as a “pillar… who has profoundly influenced the company’s educational theater work,” crediting her for developing the group’s “unique brand of art education.”

Fajardo served as PETA’s curriculum director from 2005, and was involved as production designer for several productions, including Ang Buhay ni Galileo in 1981, Macbeth in 1984, and Kahapon, Ngayon, at Bukas in 1991. She also behind the painting “Baraha ng Buhay PETA” found in the company’s theater lobby.

According to group, Fajardo helped enriched PETA’s theater design practice through the so-called Aesthetics of Poverty, “an approach that pushed the possibilities of designing for the stage with available materials.”

“The resulting aesthetics, in Brenda’s own words, ‘is a quality of form and expression that does not gloss over the conditions of poverty,'” PETA said.

“[She] leaves an undeniable legacy as one of the company’s most revered artist-teacher-leaders,” it added. – Rappler.com