The martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos spawned a wave of protest art, as scores of visual artists took up brush and easel to express their outrage against the dictatorship. Among the pieces that were produced during the period, however, few had the starkly riveting power of a painting of the 1985 murder of Italian priest Fr. Tulio Favali. This artwork was done by a soft-spoken peace advocate named Anna Ferazzini, professionally known as AnnaFer. Among her contemporaries in protest art, she was, according to art critic Emmanuel Torres,“one of the most notable for the directness of her pictorial intervention.”

AnnaFer has also depicted other socio-political themes, such as the Filipino’s colonial mentality, the rights of cultural minorities, feminism and ecology. This last theme is memorably depicted in “Green Orchid,” which Torres describes as a vibrant, ecofeminist tour de force that “once seen, sticks indelibly in the mind.”

AnnaFer’s power to create visually striking art is evident in a colored sketch entitled “Heaving Breasts,” one of the memorabilia items the artist has entrusted to ALIWW. It is a study AnnaFer had done for a streamer designed for the women of KAAKBAY, a broad coalition formed in the 1980s to fight the Marcos dictatorship. The sketch, which depicts robust-breasted women linking arms, is a tribute to feminine solidarity and power.