Presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, October 21, 2023–January 28, 2024, Pacita Abad is the artist’s (b. 1946, Basco, Philippines; d. 2004, Singapore) first retrospective. The exhibition featured more than forty works including her signature trapunto paintings: stuffed, quilted canvases Abad adorned with materials and methods she investigated during her lifetime. Across a thirty-two-year career, the prolific artist made a vast number of works that traverse a diversity of subjects—from colorful masks to intricately constructed underwater scenes to abstract compositions—revealing visual, material, and conceptual concerns that still resonate today.

When Abad left Manila in 1970, she stopped to visit her aunt in San Francisco where she found a city thrumming with radical political and creative activity. This context of Bay Area progressiv­ism formed the crucible of her growing engagement with art—and her extensive world travels, beginning in 1973, solidified her commitment. Abad, who became a U.S. citizen in 1994, spent time in more than sixty countries across six continents, including Sudan, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Afghanistan, with longer stays in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore. Through her travels, she interacted with myriad artistic communities, incorporating diverse cultural traditions—from Korean ink brush painting to Indonesian batik—into her expansive practice. The portability of these works and use of textiles Abad collected on her travels further reflected her peripatetic existence.

Abad’s embrace of quilting and other kinds of needlework confounded critics, who dismissed her works as naïve, childlike, and ethnic. In fact, Abad’s multifaceted practice articulated a powerful material politics, reflecting her vision of a nonhierarchical world. This exhibition celebrates Abad’s bold self-determination, commitment to social justice, and radical artistic experimentation.

Detail Pacita Abad, Anilao at Its Best, 1986. Oil, acrylic, mirrors, plastic buttons, and rhinestones on stitched and padded canvas, 116 x 125 in. Courtesy of the Pacita Abad Art Estate and MCAD Manila.