The first international retrospective of the late Pacita Abad (1946–2004), curated by Victoria Sung with Matthew Villar Miranda, was as celebratory as it was studious. Navigable by the curators’ bold use of color across four expansive galleries and several smaller enclosed spaces, the eponymous exhibition constructed cohesive narratives from the many thematic and stylistic movements of Abad’s autobiographical coordinates, while simultaneously correcting various omissions from the canon of 20th-century art through an intimate and timely dialogue with Abad’s diasporic, feminist practice.
Born in 1946 in Batanes, the northernmost island province of the Philippines, Abad grew up in a political family as the fifth of 13 siblings. Raised in activist circles—first in her Indigenous Ivatan homeland and then in diasporic communities in Manila—Abad’s leadership within various interethnic, multilingual student unions shaped her practice; a friend once called heras well as spending time in more than 60 countries on six continents, refining her artistic language in relation to the land, the water, people, and the myriad material cultures she interacted with.
