October 9, 2024 – January 19, 2025
AGO
A vivid kaleidoscope of colour, the first major retrospective dedicated to artist Pacita Abad (b. Philippines, 1946–2004) makes its only Canadian stop at the Art Gallery of Ontario, opening on Oct. 9, 2024. Spanning her 32-year career and showcasing Abad’s vibrant paintings, prints and trapuntos, this revelatory exhibition of more than 100 works celebrates the late artist’s bold blend of global craft, feminism and social consciousness.
Born in Batanes, Philippines, Abad migrated to the United States in 1970 to escape political persecution after she led a student demonstration against the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos. A global citizen whose work reflects a lifetime of artistic and political engagement, she travelled extensively, visiting more than 60 countries in her lifetime. Abad incorporated into her work the textiles, colours and materials she encountered – from Indonesian batik printing to Korean ink drawing, macramé and beading. Her signature medium is the trapunto, a hybrid art form she developed in 1981, inspired by medieval Italian tapestries. In these signature pieces, the painted and embellished canvas is stuffed then quilted, to create large, richly textured wall hangings.
Abad’s desire to give visibility to political refugees and oppressed peoples is as striking as her numerous abstract experiments with colour. “I have always believed that an artist has a special obligation to remind society of its social responsibility,” she said.
About the Exhibition
Pacita Abad features more than 100 works from collections across Asia, Europe and North America. Key works in the exhibition are accompanied by panel texts in English and Tagalog. Organized thematically into seven overlapping, loosely chronological sections, the exhibition opens with 100 Years of Freedom: From Batanes to Jolo (1998), a series of draping triangles, featuring fabrics from every province of the Philippines.
Photo: At Maculangan/Pioneer Studios.
Centering Abad as an activist, in Marcos and His Cronies (1985–95), Abad portrays the dictator responsible for her own immigrant experience, as a towering, highly ornamental dragon demon, surrounded by masks and shown consuming people. Made 15 years after her escape, the memory looms large – as evidenced by the artwork’s size – 5 meters by 2.5 meters, embroidered with textiles, mirrors, shells, buttons, glass beads, gold thread, and padded cloth.
A selection of powerful social realist works from the 1970s and 80s follow, featuring scenes of diasporic communities from Asia, Africa, and Latin America facing persecution and poverty. These images set the stage again further on in the exhibition, for her series of trapunto paintings, Immigrant Experience (1983–95), which depict the layered realities of immigrant life in the United States. This tension is poignantly captured in L.A. Liberty (1992), in which a brown-skinned, patchworked Statue of Liberty poses triumphantly against a rainbow sunburst.
Non-western masks and spirits are recurring motifs for Abad. A highlight of the exhibition is the 15-meter six-part mural Masks from Six Continents (1990–93). Commissioned in 1990 for the Metro Centre in Washington D.C., the multicoloured trapuntos that comprise the series reflect each habitable continent through a different Indigenous mask. All that is, except Europe. Abad once said of the works that they were “all the different people I see on the train.”
The mid-way point of the exhibition provides a further introduction to the artist, with photos, a range of archival material and studio ephemera. In the short film, Pacita Abad: Wild at Art (1995) Abad discusses her background, passion for world travel, and the ways she sought to incorporate and highlight traditional female art practices. Directed by Kavery Kaul, this film is an Asian Women United Presentation, a Riverfilms Production, and an Academy Film Archives Restoration.
Heavily inspired by jazz music, Abad’s experiments with patterned abstraction are celebrated with a selection of works from the 1990s, including The Sky is Falling, the Sky is Falling (1998), a vibrant trapunto evoking of what it’s like to stand in a protest.
Later in life, Abad learned to swim, and in scuba diving found a new source of inspiration. The exhibition includes eight large-scale underwater landscapes, including My Fear of Night Diving (1985). In these images, drawn from life and made vibrant through collage, beauty and peril are shown in equal measure.
Exiting the exhibition, visitors encounter images of Abad’s final project, Alkaff Bridge, Singapore, a 55-meter bridge she covered in more than 2,000 colourful circles. It was completed a few months before she passed away from lung cancer in 2004.
About Pacita Abad
Pacita Abad (1946–2004) has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions, including I Thought the Streets Were Paved with Gold at the Jameel Arts Center, Dubai (2021); Life in the Margins at Spike Island, Bristol (2020); and A Million Things to Say at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2018). Her work has been featured in group exhibitions, including the 58th Carnegie International (2022); the Kathmandu Triennale 2077 (2002); the 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021); and the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020). Her work can be found in the collections of Tate Modern, London; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; and National Gallery of Singapore, among others. Her art and archives are managed by the Pacita Abad Art Estate in Los Angeles.
