Mijan Jumalon comes from a family of painters in Mindanao and has been a practising artist for three decades, showing her work in Manila, Davao, Cebu, and abroad in Rome and Singapore. In 2019, Mijan ventured into production design and filmmaking, alongside her painting practice, and has won awards for her documentary and narrative short films.

Her recent paintings feature landscapes of forked pathways and ruined architecture, through which wander often solitary human figures. Crimson, ultramarine and yellow clouds form prairies under ominous skies. Jumalon deliberately conflates internal and external landscapes, representing spatial and emotional relationships through a surrealist aesthetic that comments on the movement of people — a condition endemic in Mindanao due to internal displacements created by conflict and unrest.

Return to Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago: Roots and Currents