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‘Natural Tapestries’ Celebrates the Life of Lenore RS Lim
Natural Tapestries: A Womanhood Through Print, showing at the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writing (ALiWW) until February 28, gives us a personal perspective of artist and educator Lenore RS Lim. Her influential use of computer-aided art in the 1990s made her a pioneer in the Philippine and international art scene.
This showing of her works functions as the 16th Natividad Galang Fajardo Exhibit, an endowment which seeks to push for appreciation for women in the visual arts. This is something that ALiWW Executive Director Kristine Santos believes is important to ensure Filipino women’s place in the “national imagination” of art.
“I think putting women at the forefront allows us to really reflect on women’s contributions to society,” she said. “And [to] also think of a society where women are part of our national imagination. I think that’s the hardest part with our country: that we are operating on the sense of who we are as Filipinos and yet somehow we are also forgetting what it means to be a Filipino woman.”
Womanhood and the Openness to Change
Lenore RS Lim’s story showcases the unique journeys one takes into making art. She graduated from the University of the Philippines with a degree in Fine Arts. But when she migrated to Canada with her family, she ended up pursuing a career in Early Childhood Education thanks to government subsidies.
Her daughter, Marie Claire Lim-Moore, ended up dramatizing some of her experiences with Lim growing up in her bestselling books Don’t Forget the Soap and Don’t Forget the Parsley.
Throughout this time, she never forgot about her desire to create art, and she started making art again during her middle-age. She joked during the exhibit opening that she was a “late bloomer” —and yet that doesn’t diminish her accomplishments as an artist.
“She’s one, like many Filipinas, who embraced opportunities abroad in hopes of a better life,” Santos said. “And to a certain extent, in that openness to change, just also led to her embracing something different in the middle of her life.
“Meaning, yes, artistic opportunities weren’t there during the early years of her life. She was happy as an art teacher. But when she had this opportunity to showcase her work, to represent and develop her work, either by embracing technology or by using her experience, drawing from her own traditions, drawing from her own memories; I think, even at such a later part of her life, it’s so fascinating that she wholeheartedly embraced it and continued it.”
Pixels and Finding Personhood in Our Tools
Natural Tapestries, as an exhibit, is less exhaustive than a similar exhibit about Lim’s accomplishments currently showing at the National Museum. But it’s more personal, as it contains select artworks and archival materials that provide a more intimate portrait of Lenore RS Lim’s perspective as an artist and as a person.
There are newspaper clippings, as well as different write-ups and articles centered around her family life. Many of the awards she’s won are also showcased in the exhibit, displaying the accomplishments that she achieved even when starting her career later than others.
She became an early adopter of pixelated art, with publications like Computer World Philippines touting her skillset in the form. Her work is described in the exhibit write-up as one that “would integrate the inorganic pixelations of photographs and scans with images of organic laces, flowers, and leaves. This would serve as her legacy in art.”
“Rather than losing herself in technology, Ma’am Lenore embraced, skillfully merging tradition with innovation,” Santos said about Lim’s process. “She proudly sees herself as an early adopter of computer-aided art, proving that creativity transcends tools and mediums.”
Tapestry of Strength and Grace
More interesting than that, however, is how Natural Tapestries features the different methodologies that Lenore RS Lim engaged in to embody the organic vision of her day-to-day life.
The exhibit features different aspects of her art career, from callado tapestries that she said her mother used to sell when she was younger, all the way to the different prints of beautiful flowers that served as a reflection of the environment she grew up in.
Patricia Lambino, the Dean of Humanities in Ateneo de Manila, expressed her fascination with Lim’s process of printmaking, the profoundness of creating unique pictures through the mere act of utilizing layers of images on top of each other
“[Printmaking] includes crucial and painstaking work on a matrix or template,” Lambino said. “I won’t pretend to know about it, not being a printmaker myself. But I’ve seen it in action and I’m fascinated by that particular artform. I saw someone live doing it, and this process of layering and layering and layering as each unique print is produced is not very different from what we do here, the process of teaching, educating, and learning.”
Broadening Inspirations for Womanhood as a Whole
In the end, Natural Tapestries becomes this rallying cry—not just for womanhood’s place in the Philippines’ art history, but also in finding openness in seeking for new opportunities and ambitions even if one starts later than others. As Santos points out, most women aren’t like Lenore RS Lim; they don’t get to receive the opportunity to create art in general within this society.
![Lenore RS Lim [Center] accepting accolades from the Ateneo Library of Women's Writing for her contribution to visual arts.](https://bluprint-onemega.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20250211_135449.jpg)
“To be honest, not a lot of women have that choice [to start an art career],” she said. “But when [Lim] did, [she took it] and I hope that she becomes an inspiration to many to see that life can begin at any time. Your art can begin at any time in your life.”
Photos by Elle Yap.
Related reading: ‘Matrix II’: Representing the Varieties of the Filipina Experience Today
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