Japanese Occupation (1989) and other works

Overview

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. Fajardo presents three works from her tarot card series: Japanese Occupation (1989); American Occupation (1989); and Makaalis kaya si Huwan at Mariya Sa Ilalim ng Anino Ni Samuel Agila? [Can Juan and Maria get out of the shadow of Samuel the Eagle?] (1989). Appropriating the oracular schema of tarot, she constructs a deck of cards influenced by Indigenous motifs of kinship, power relations and spiritualism as well ascharacters derived from popular heroes, precolonial figures, mythological personae and Filipinos of diverse origins.