Pacita Abad Celebrated at Her First Retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Pacita Abad was a force of nature and a giant in Philippine contemporary art, but she’s not that well-known internationally outside of enthusiasts and art circles. But an exhibit of her work currently touring in the United States is bringing the genius of her creativity to a wider audience. 

For the first time ever, Abad’s incredible breadth of work is being featured in an exhaustive retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA) called simply Pacita Abad. The exhibit, which was first unveiled at the Walker Art Center Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota earlier this year, features over 40 of the artist’s works throughout her career—from traditional paintings that shone a light on social issues, to trapunto paintings, or textured canvases that she painted and embellished with buttons, shells, beads, and mirrors, that became her signature.

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“Abad’s ease in moving through distant geographies and connecting with different peoples afforded her a uniquely transnational perspective,” says Victoria Sung, former curator of visual arts at the Walker Art Center and organizer of this retrospective in a release about the exhibition. “She found community and built relationships with artists, exchanging ways of making and incorporating new materials and methods into her art. In the eighties and nineties, few artists were truly global in the sense that she was.”

Museeum-goers reading about the Pacita Abad retrosepctive at the San Francisco Museum of Mdoern Art

“When curator Nancy Lim and I learned that this exhibition was being planned, we knew that it had to come to San Francisco—the city that inspired Pacita Abad to commit her life to artistic expression,” said Eungie Joo, curator and head of contemporary art at SFMOMA. “While some of the works gathered here were shown locally during Abad’s lifetime, this is the first exhibition to reveal the profundity of her prolific practice.”

Born in Basco, Batanes in 1946 and died in Singapore in 2004, Abad was a prolific artist who created art from a diverse array of subjects throughout her life. The works featured in the retrospective showcase “the energetic interplay between abstraction and figuration in Abad’s practice and illuminate her engagement with people, places and critical issues of her time. 

Flight to Freedom

“When asked in 1991 what she had contributed to American art, Abad answered, ‘Color! I have given it color!’”

Esquire Philippines visited SF MOMA in the first week of November. It was an emotional experience, particularly for Abad’s kababayans from the Philippines, to see her larger-than-life work given so much prominence at an important artistic and cultural institution as the SF MOMA. Here are some of our favorite pieces from the Pacita Abad exhibition:

View of Pacita Abad's works featuring her Masks series

L.A. Liberty

Caught at the Border

Haitians Waiting at Guantanamo Bay

If My Friends Could See Me Now

Marcos and His Cronies

Girls in Ermita

Freedom from Illusion

Spring is Coming

Breast-feeding Mother

Water of Life

Masai Man

Puerto Galera IV

My Fear of Night DivingL Assaulting the Deep Sea

The Far Side of Apo Island

Anilao at Its Best

The Pacita Abad retrospective can be viewed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) until January 28, 2024. United Airlines flies nonstop flights daily between San Francisco and Manila.

 

Throughout her 32-year career from the 1970s to the early 2000s, Abad centered the triumphs and adversities of people on the periphery of power, as seen in her Social Realist, Immigrant Experience and Masks and Spirits series. This exhibition celebrates an artist whose vibrant and inventive practice generated thousands of daring artworks—from intricately constructed underwater scenes to abstract compositions—and whose themes are as urgent today as they were two decades ago.