Among the textile artists on display at the 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice (until November 24th) there is also the late Pacita Abad (1946-2004).
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Abad's death, and the Filipina-American artist is experiencing a major rediscovery with a retrospective at MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York (until September 2), while curator Adriano Pedrosa chose her works to be featured at this year's Venice Biennale.
Abad was a self-taught artist known for her series of trapunto paintings – quilted paintings made by stitching and stuffing her painted canvases to create a sculptural effect. Her works often incorporate materials such as beads, shells, and buttons for added three-dimensionality.
In the previous post, we looked at artists chronicling their lives or political events in their countries through textiles. Similarly, Abad sought to give visibility to political refugees and oppressed peoples in her work.
Born in the Philippines to a family of politicians, Abad was influenced by her family's public service. As a student, she often led demonstrations against the dictatorial regime of President Ferdinand Marcos. In 1970, to escape the regime, she moved to the United States.
In San Francisco, she met Asian and Latin American immigrants who had left their home countries for economic or sociopolitical reasons. Their stories inspired her to pursue studies in immigration law to advocate for their causes.
At the same time, Abad was deeply inspired by the local art scene. After her history studies at Lone Mountain College, she decided to use art instead of law to speak up for marginalized people.
Traveling with her husband, an economist for the World Bank, she saw other realities and expanded her worldview, visiting refugee camps and expanding her awareness of political and social matters. Besides, she learned various sewing, stitching, and embroidery techniques from different cultures, which she then fused into her artworks.
In the 1990s, Abad created work that referenced multiculturalism and immigration, like her pieces showcased at the Venice Biennale, that perfectly fit in with this year's theme, "Foreigners Everywhere".
Her large trapunto paintings, such as "Haitians Waiting at Guantanamo Bay" (1994), depicting people waiting behind barbed wires with sunlit skies and palm trees, and" Filipinas in Hong Kong" (1995), showing groups of Filipinas moving in a vibrant city colonized by big brands and boutiques of luxury fashion houses, illustrate the alien world in which migrants live.
Another piece, "You Have to Blend in Before You Stand Out" (1995), a large trapunto of a woman dressed in a sarong matched with a Yankees baseball cap and Bulls basketball jersey, captures the internal struggle that immigrants and their families experience when integrating into a new society. Abad herself became a naturalized US citizen twenty-four years after arriving in the US.
When Abad died from cancer in 2004, she was still relatively unknown as an artist, having been denied mainstream recognition.
Her story is one of rejections: her works, often seen as feminine, decorative, and ethnic, were indeed rejected by hundreds of museums in the US, which are now eager to display her works. Abad was fully aware of the prejudices she faced, but she turned things around by defining herself as a "woman of color", using a definition that negatively described her identity to hint instead at the vibrant shades of her works.
Abad's work is likely to be discovered by fashion houses (soon on a Dior runway by Maria Grazia Chiuri?), but her art should be appreciated not just for her connection with textiles and fabrics, but for her beliefs that an artist has a special obligation to remind society of its social responsibility. Otherwise, we risk of turning some of Abad's works that tackle globalization into adverts for fashion brands. The Nike, Chanel, Versace, Moschino, Salvatore Ferragamo, Armani, Dior, DKNY, Benetton and Levi's adverts and stores in "Filipinas in Hong Kong" are indeed not included as a celebration of fashion brands, but as urban elements that define a globalized landscape where brands transcend geographical boundaries, yet societal, economic, and financial barriers persist for individuals.
For those interested in learning more about Abad, the current exhibition at MoMA PS1 offers a journey through her 32-year career, with an exhibition featuring over 50 works, most of which have never been on public view in the United States before.
