Pio Abad explores the connections between personal experiences and political issues through various art forms, including drawing, painting, textiles, installation and text. His work excavates overlooked historical events, revealing different perspectives that highlight links between incidents, ideologies and people. Born to parents at the forefront of the anti-dictatorship struggle in the Philippines during the 1970s and ’80s, Abad weaves his family’s hardships into the nation’s history, driven by a desire to remember and share this important chapter in the country’s past. Abad’s upbringing serves the foundations of his work, continuing to shape his work in direct and indirect ways. Abad’s series of 14 drawings, 1897.76.36.18.6 (2023), is a culmination of his residency at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The series juxtaposes ‘diasporic’ objects that have shared the same London postal address during different moments in time: the Benin Bronzes and the day-to-day items at Abad’s current home. A fine, screen-printed forensic measuring bar on the left and bottom of the image, and a thin horizontal line above and below the objects, indicate their height. Abad utilises these historic artefacts as conduits for cultural memory. Crafted in the 16th century, the Benin Bronzes gained notoriety due to the 1897 British Expedition that terminated the Kingdom of Benin and led to extensive looting. The personal objects in the drawings feature a range of books, small furniture pieces and even a photograph of Abad’s young mother, who passed away a few years ago. Sharing the same height, the sacred West African artefacts are presented on a par with personal items, some of which quietly reflect the artist’s own experience of loss and grief. Using drawing – a genre associated with a sense of domestic intimacy – the series is a reminder of the many individual stories that are inextricably intertwined with world history, cultural discontinuity and loss.
The Ashmolean Museum has acquired three drawings from Abad’s series, made specifically for the artist’s solo show in 2024 at the museum. Abad’s exhibition, titled To Those Sitting in Darkness, was a part of the Ashmolean NOW exhibition series where artists are invited to create work in response to the museum’s collection. Housing rich holdings of works on paper, ranging from drawings by Flemish artists of the 17th century to contemporary Chinese ink paintings, the Ashmolean provides a fitting context for Abad’s drawings.
