Mijan Jumalon’s Asesina series: the revolutionized Filipina
ZAMBOANGA CITY (MindaNews / 15 March) — Mijan Jumalon is not only a painter but also a cultural storyteller, blending visual art and film to highlight resilience, womanhood, and the lived realities of Mindanao.
The Zamboanga City-based painter and multidisciplinary artist, known for her three decades of work exploring the female form, feminist themes, and the resilience of Mindanawon culture, is featuring revolutionized Filipino women in a series dubbed as Asesina.
“These are symbolic of women’s dual nature, of capacity for tenderness and rage…creation and destruction, etcetera,” she said.
“Maybe it’s also a reaction to society that wishes we’re one note, all softness, pleasant and agreeable,” she added.
Jumalon has exhibited widely across the Philippines and abroad, and more recently, has expanded into filmmaking and production design.
Jumalon explains that Asesina is a woman of strength and defiance, a woman who refuses to be passive. It represents danger and allure, a kind of beauty or charisma that feels overwhelming. It represents resistance and survival, especially in contexts of conflict or marginalized communities, the word can symbolize resilience.
“In the romantic or revolutionary imagination, Asesina carries agency. She is dangerous because she is intentional. Society fears her not just because of what she does, but because of what she refuses to be: passive, predictable, containable. She is the subject of her own sentence,” she said.
“She is armed, upright, leaning into the divine with intention,” referring to the painting titled Assassinada.
Jumalon comes from a family of painters, a lineage which shaped her early immersion in the visual arts.
She has consistently focused on the female form as her central motif. Her works have been showcased in Manila, Cebu, Davao, and abroad in Australia, reflecting both local and international recognition.
Jumalon’s paintings rarely depart from depictions of women, which she treats as symbols of strength, ritual, and identity. While her art often intersects with feminist social issues, her approach emphasizes the rituals of womanhood and the elevation of female experience.
Her Baggage Revolution series in 2022 presents a multiptych landscape of forked pathways across a crimson prairie, symbolizing struggle, resilience, and transformation.
Jumalon creates haunting landscapes that explore the hidden transitions between beginnings and endings. Using imagery of prairies and winding paths, her work reflects on the fragility of life and the difficult emotions that come with change.
Her 2024 exhibit, These are the Hours, focused on the fleeting nature of time and the universal experience of fear and sadness.
In her 2025 solo show, Personas Versus Mijan Jumalon, she looks at the conflict between our public faces and our private selves.
Alongside her visual art, she expanded into filmmaking in 2019, directing the documentary Maglabay Ra In Sakit (The Pain Will Pass) and the short film Ola, which won BestShort Film at the 44th Gawad Urian.
Jumalon directed Maglabay Ra In Sakit, a short documentary about RKJun, a young Zamboanga City rapper confronting poverty and terrorism. The film won Best Documentary at the GlobeIndie Film Festival in 2019, Best Editing at the Istorya ng Pag-asa Film Festival, and other recognitions, highlighting her versatility beyond painting.
Jumalon’s art and film projects reflect the cultural resilience of Zamboanga City, a place often marked by conflict yet rich in creativity. Through both painting and film, she amplifies narratives of women, youth, and marginalized communities, making her a vital cultural figure in Southern Mindanao. (Frencie L. Carreon / MindaNews)
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