Pacita Abad - by Victoria Sung (Hardcover)

About the Book

Published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name held at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, April 15-September 3, 2023; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, October 21, 2023-January 28, 2024; MoMA PS1, New York, March 28-September 2, 2024; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, October 12, 2024-January 19, 2025.

Book Synopsis

A comprehensive survey of Abad's visually dazzling and politically prescient works blending fabric and painting

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.
Over the course of her career, Abad made an exuberant, wide-ranging body of work that was ahead of its time in promoting a transcultural worldview. Moving between the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and the US--while also spending extended periods in dozens of countries on six continents--she interacted with the many artist communities she encountered on her travels. Drawing on her knowledge of global fiber traditions, Abad innovated a hybrid art form that she called "trapunto" painting (from the Italian word trapungere, "to embroider"). Made by stitching and stuffing her painted canvases as opposed to stretching them over a wood frame, the resulting works' portability speaks to her peripatetic existence, while their association with textiles evokes female, non-Western forms of labor that have historically been marginalized as craft.
Pacita Abad (1946-2004) was born in Batanes, Philippines. Because of her activism against the Marcos regime, she was forced to leave for the US in 1970, where she studied Asian history at the University of San Francisco and painting at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, and the Art Students League in New York City. Abad created more than 5,000 artworks and had over 60 solo exhibitions in the US, Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America.

Review Quotes

She crammed her art full of folk traditions, making political messaging and feminism safe for pleasure. Even her most pointed works quiver with delight.--Ariella Budick "Financial Times: How To Spend It"

Abad's signature format was trapunto, a style of large-scale quilt. Despite the playfulness of their textures and coloring, Abad's versions often tackled dense, complicated intersectionalities, from her identity as an immigrant Ivatan woman in the Western world to the social and political tensions of the authoritarian Marcos regime in the Philippines.--Raymond Ang "Vogue"

This exhibition affords her a level of recognition from the American art establishment that she never received while alive, and it is also an occasion for the celebration of the many other textile practices flourishing in the hands of women worldwide, which museums still so often struggle to appreciate on their own terms.--Jasmine Liu "Nation"

Honors the breadth and fervor of Abad's roving career...this jewel of a catalogue permits the artist's legacy to shine, resplendently.--Tausif Noor "Bookforum"

The artist's appeal is now instantly apparent in Abad's must-see retrospective.--Sarah Cascone "Artnet"

Cataloguing more than 100 works and featuring oral histories from Abad's closest interlocutors, the book extensively details the beautiful visual practice of an artist who was remarkably unbounded in lifestyle, medium, vision, and process.--Sarah Rose Sharp "Hyperallergic"

A new exhibition catalogue illustrates the artist's dedication to humanity, managing a tender balance between self-expression and true global consciousness.--Sarah Rose Sharp "Hyperallergic"

This book never stopped being visually arresting, compelling, and joyful.-- "AIGA"