Pacita Abad
The first retrospective of Pacita Abad (born 1946, Basco, Philippines; died 2004, Singapore) features more than 40 daring works including her signature trapunto paintings — stuffed, quilted canvases Abad adorned with materials and methods she investigated during her lifetime. Over a 32-year career, the prolific artist made a vast number of artworks that traverse a diversity of subjects, from colorful masks to intricately constructed underwater scenes to abstract compositions.
Though she became a U.S. citizen in 1994, Abad spent time in more than 60 countries, including Sudan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, with longer stays in the United States, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore. Through her travels, she interacted with myriad artistic communities, incorporating diverse cultural traditions — from Korean ink brush painting to Indonesian batik — into her expansive practice. Abad’s global, peripatetic existence is reflected in the portability of her works and in her use of textiles, a medium often associated with female labor and historically marginalized as craft. Her bold, colorful pieces are deeply personal expressions of her lived experience, and the exhibition celebrates the work of an artist whose vibrant visual, material, and conceptual concerns are as urgent today as they were three decades ago.
Pacita Abad with her trapunto painting Ati-Atihan, 1983, wearing garments and jewelry collected on her travels; courtesy Pacita Abad Art Estate
“I have always believed that an artist has a special obligation to remind society of its social responsibility.”
— Pacita Abad
Born in the Philippines to a family of politicians, Abad was greatly influenced by her family’s public service. In 1970, after leading a student demonstration against the Marcos regime, Abad left the Philippines. She intended to move to Madrid to finish a degree in law, but a stop in San Francisco to visit relatives became a long-term stay that would change the trajectory of her life.
Read Abad’s full biography.
Exhibition Preview
Exhibition Catalogue
This volume surveys three decades of Pacita Abad’s multifaceted practice. Published on the occasion of her first-ever retrospective, it includes new research and writing by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Ruba Katrib, Nancy Lim, Matthew Villar Miranda, Victoria Sung, and Xiaoyu Weng; an edited oral history about the artist’s life and work by Pio Abad and Victoria Sung; and never-before-seen artworks and archival materials.
