Brenda Fajardo – Philippines: Brenda Fajardo, born in 1940, was honoured in 1998 as one of her country’s One Hundred Culture Heroes by the Cultural Centre of the Philippines. Using folk beliefs and imagery, including the use of tarot cards, she takes local historic and mythical stories and brings them to life in paintings of contemporary political relevance. A well-known series is her Playing Cards of Filipino Life, a version of which is in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery. Her work is often small (but intensely worked and richly coloured) but the themes are large – about the struggle of life in socially chaotic times, especially for women, children and the powerless.