Aileen Lanuza is an award-winning artist known for her works referencing Filipino femininity projected in the archetypal chaste Maria Clara (of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere). Here, she juxtaposes a Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde poser of a woman with dual ‘personalities,’ one garbed in traditional Hispanicized dress, with double-layered opaque folds waist-down for added modesty, and conversely, one in a super-heroine ‘Cat Woman’ outfit, black no less, in a defiant and nonchalant pose. The lady in the former looks demure but stern and definitely intimidating, while ‘Cat Woman’ is flighty though in what looks like slack pants, looks approachable and fun, even. The way a woman is dressed also follows tribal roots and cultural ethos, while those from the Islamic Mindanao are another matter. Today, the modern Filipina is more than likely to be clothed in just t-shirts and denim jeans. The subtexts of this work are many, i) End of femininity; ii) Woman as a super hero ‘Wonder Woman’; iii) colonial and media influences harking to the Philippines’ Spanish and American colonial past; iv) What price ‘virginity’? In an interview in The Manila Bulletin on April 30, 2018, Thou Art Woman, Lunaza confided: “I like how inspiration hits me like a ton of bricks and I let it snowball from there. I need to feel it, to be in a stupor.” Lanuza was a child art prodigy, whose artwork was recognised as one of the five best entries in an art competition hosted by the then President Fidel Ramos. She was a finalist in the Caltex Sci-Fi nation-wide art competition and an awardee in the McCann Erickson 2002. In 2003, she graduated with fine arts cum laude at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, but it was only in June 2008 that she held her first solo, Expressions, at Galerie Raphael in Manila. In 2009, she won the Juror’s Choice Award in the GSIS National Art Competition in the Philippines.