Pio Abad

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Pio Abad’s artistic practice is concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects. His wide-ranging body of work, encompassing drawing, painting, textiles, installation and text, mines alternative or repressed historical events and offers counternarratives that draw out threads of complicity between incidents, ideologies and people. Deeply informed by unfolding events in the Philippines, where Abad was born and raised, his art emanates from a family narrative woven into the nation’s story. Abad’s parents were at the forefront of the anti-dictatorship struggle in the Philippines during the 1970’s and 80’s and it is the need to remember this history that has shaped the foundations of his work.

Abad’s solo exhibitions include: To Those Sitting in Darkness, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2024); Fear of Freedom Makes Us See Ghosts, Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila (2022); Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite, Kadist, San Francisco (2019); Splendour, Oakville Galleries, Ontario (2019); Notes on Decomposition, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2016); 1975 – 2015, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney and Some Are Smarter Than Others, Gasworks, London (2014). Recent group exhibition include In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire, 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennial, Kerala (2022); Is it morning for you yet?, The 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022); Things Entangling, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2020); Phantom Limb, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2019); To Make Wrong/Right/Now, 2nd Honolulu Biennial, Hawaii (2019); Imagined Nations/ Modern Utopias, 12th Gwangju Biennial, Korea (2018).

Abad’s artworks are part of a number of important collections including Tate, UK; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hawai’i State Art Museum, Honolulu; Singapore Art Museum; Kadist, Paris/San Francisco and Art Jameel, Dubai.

He is also the curator of the estate of his aunt, the Filipino American artist Pacita Abad. He has recently co-curated monographic exhibitions on Pacita Abad at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design Manila; Spike Island, Bristol and Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai. He also co-edited the publication Pacita Abad: A Million Things to Say in 2021.

WIKIPEDIA

ASHMOLEAN NOW by Lena Fritsch, Pio Abad & Vera Mey

ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM OXFORD

REGULAR PRICE ¥5,280 (tax incl.)