Mijan Jumalon, a Zamboanga City-based painter and multidisciplinary artist, is renowned for her three decades of work exploring the female form, feminist themes, and the resilience of Mindanawon culture. Known as both a painter and cultural storyteller, she blends visual art and film to highlight resilience, womanhood, and the lived realities of Mindanao. Her series Asesina features revolutionized Filipino women, symbolizing their dual nature—tenderness and rage, creation and destruction. Jumalon explains that Asesina represents strength, defiance, and resilience, embodying resistance and survival in marginalized communities. “Society fears her because she refuses to be passive, predictable, or containable,” she says.
Coming from a family of painters, Jumalon has consistently focused on the female form as her central motif, treating women as symbols of strength, ritual, and identity. Her works have been showcased in Manila, Cebu, Davao, and abroad in Australia. Her Baggage Revolution series (2022) depicts forked pathways across crimson prairies, symbolizing struggle and transformation. Her 2024 exhibit, These are the Hours, explores the fleeting nature of time, while her 2025 solo show, Personas Versus Mijan Jumalon, examines the conflict between public faces and private selves.
Expanding into filmmaking in 2019, Jumalon directed the documentary Maglabay Ra In Sakit (The Pain Will Pass), which won Best Documentary at the 2019 GlobeIndie Film Festival, and the short film Ola, which won Best Short Film at the 44th Gawad Urian. Through her art and films, Jumalon amplifies narratives of women, youth, and marginalized communities, making her a vital cultural figure in Southern Mindanao. Her work reflects the resilience and creativity of Zamboanga City, a place marked by conflict yet rich in cultural expression. (Frencie L. Carreon / MindaNews)
