Women in the arts

March sweeps across Cebu’s vibrant shores like a gentle monsoon, bearing promises of rebirth and remembrance during Women’s Month. Here, we honor the extraordinary women --poets, painters, performers, and preservers-- who have woven and boldly redefined the fabric of our arts, literature, music, and culture, infusing every brushstroke, verse, and melody with resilience, innovation, and unapologetic femininity.

In literature, women from Cebu include the young poets who took great inspiration from the late Mila D. Aguilar, whose fiery feminist poetry was written in the shadow of martial law and recited in underground readings that eventually became the main events of the Cebu Literary Festival. Cebu's voice reverberates from Carbon Market stories to international shelves thanks to her prose, which connects Sulat Bisaya folklore to international anthologies.

No one can dare to exclude Professor Merlie M. Alunan, a Cebuano-Visayan poet, fictionist, and professor emerita at the University of the Philippines Visayas Tacloban College, crafts evocative works like “Running with Ghosts” and “Sa Atong Dila”, blending Waray, Cebuano, and English to evoke folklore and women's lives, earning National Book Awards and the Sunthorn Phu Award. Her itinerant poetry bridges regional roots with global appeal, inspiring festivals and studies nationwide. In March 2026, she clinched the 18th Ani ng Dangal Award for Literary Arts, honoring her 2025 International Writers Award from the UK's Royal Society of Literature.

Cebuana brilliance exploded in the visual arts. Sculptors such as Nilda Maglasang-Castillo were inspired by the batik-infused Madonnas of National Artist Resurreccion Hidalgo, which once graced Basilica Minore del Santo Niño. Her dynamic installations, which feature sinulog dancers spinning in brass and LED, now adorn the plazas of SM Seaside City, captivating onlookers with motion that reflects our joyous pulse.

Theater and performance stages exalt Cebu’s feminine dynamism to soaring heights. Cecilia Garrucho’s masterful directorial skill revived Parian of the 40s, a zarzuela reenacting WWII Cebuana spies, where haunting kundiman arias intertwined seamlessly with tinikling’s precise footwork. Her all-female casts fuse zarzuela with raw spoken word, transforming the venue into pulsing arenas of empowerment that leave audiences breathless. Complementing this, choreographer Liza Macalandag’s sulad ensembles from rural Mambaling sweep streets in zero-waste Sinulog side events, their patadyong skirts billowing like ocean waves to teach eco-feminism through every rhythmic step.

In music, Ingrid Sala Santamaria has indelibly transformed Cebu's classical scene as the founding chair of the Cebu Piano Teachers’ Guild, where her pioneering multi-piano concerts revolutionized training and elevated performance standards island-wide. Her visionary stewardship of the Salvador and Pilar Sala Foundation’s decade-spanning Music Development Program, launched in 1991, offered full scholarships to prodigious young talents, giving rise to the Cebu Youth Symphony Orchestra in 1995 --a ensemble that evolved into the Peace Philharmonic Philippines, the sole major orchestra south of Manila, propelling innumerable careers forward.

Yet, funding scarcities and biases persist. Patrons must commission their projects, advocates lobby for grants, the public fill their venues. As Women’s Month crescendos, let their light guide us. Cultural heartbeat thrives through them --resilient, radiant, revolutionary. Pledge now: amplify their art, preserve their fire. As cultural advocates, art patrons, and Cebuanos from market vendors to museum-goers, let us celebrate and safeguard their living legacy.

To women creators: Salamat kaayo; your symphony endures, inspiring eternities. Onward, sisters --dance, sing, create unbound!