Pio Abad explores objects and images that have personal resonance and political potency. His primary medium is installations comprising multiple materials, forms and methods, from fine pen drawings and textiles to photography and text.
Pio Abad’s Imelda as Maganda, Ferdinand as Malakas (2015) Courtesy of the artist
The foundation of his work is an engagement with the history and present of his homeland, the Philippines, where he was born in 1983, and where his parents were involved in the struggle against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s. The conditions of that brutal regime, its propaganda and visual excess, the international power structures of which it was part, and its legacies today have been fundamental to his practice.
Exhibition view of Pio Abad’s To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (10 February–8 September 2024) Courtesy Ashmolean Museum; photo: © Hannah Pye
In recent years, Abad has expanded his work to explore broader themes relating to collections of art and artefacts, and the histories of violence, theft and exploitation that underpin them.
Exhibition view of Pio Abad’s Fear of Freedom Makes Us See Ghosts at Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila (19 April–6 August 2022) Courtesy the artist and Ateneo Art Gallery; photo: At Maculangan
Abad discusses his interest in the seductive power of objects in telling complex stories and reflects on the importance of writing and drawing to his work, how his large-scale forensic drawings are a means of “excessively remembering” to counter forgotten histories, and about honouring unnamed artists from non-Western cultures through painstaking depicting their works.
Exhibition view of Pio Abad’s Turner Prize 2024 exhibition at Tate Britain, London, 2024 (25 September 2024 – 16 February 2025) Courtesy of the artist; photo: Andy Keate
The artist recalls his memories of his aunt, the artist Pacita Abad, and her formative effect on his own artistic trajectory, as well as his position as curator of her estate. He reflects on the importance of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, especially in his balance between weighty subject matter and formal economy, the drawings of Henri Michaux and Egon Schiele, and the writers Jorge Luis Borges, Hisham Matar and Teju Cole. He gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Installation view of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh, featuring Pio Abad Courtesy of the artist and Tina Kim Gallery; photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Look out for a video version of this interview on the YouTube channels of The Art Newspaper and Bloomberg Connects.
• Pio Abad, In Minor Keys: 61st Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, until 22 November
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture platform. Bloomberg Connects offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single click, with new guides being added regularly. They include several UK museums and galleries that have shown Pio Abad’s work, including Tate in the UK, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Kadist in Paris. You can also find the official digital guide to La Biennale Arte 2026 in Venice, in whose international exhibition, In Minor Keys, Pio Abad features. You can read and hear about Pio and the other 110 artists in the exhibition, follow the full list of National Participations in pavilions in the Giardini and elsewhere throughout Venice, and explore the 31 collateral events dotted around the city, and use an interactive map to locate the artists, pavilions and nearby spaces. Bloomberg Connects also features the official guides to a range of national presentations at the Biennale: the Brazil, Britain, Germany, India, Panama and Philippines pavilions, as well as the Venetian Diary, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s collection self-portrait of the city.
