The Filipino-born, London-based artist Pio Abad, whose artistic practice explores personal-political differences and the absence of a clear distinction between them, will be present at the Venice Biennale 2026. His work includes personal narratives from Philippine political history and the problematic cultural legacy of the Marcos dictatorship. Recent attempts to rehabilitate this legacy through art are sensational, and his presence at the Biennale is particularly notable. It highlights the Biennale’s political argument.
Pio Abad’s artistic activity focuses on the personal and political entanglements of things. He also examines their political readings and reinterpretations. His diverse body of work spans text, painting, textiles, installation, and sketching. It explores alternative or suppressed historical events and offers counternarratives that highlight connections among situations, ideologies, and individuals.
Who is Artist Pio Abad?
Pio Abad (b. 1983, Manila, lives and works in London) began his art studies at the University of the Philippines before receiving a BA from Glasgow School of Art and an MA from the Royal Academy Schools, London. He has exhibited at Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow; Gasworks, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Mackintosh Museum, Glasgow; EVA International Biennial, Limerick; Kadist, Paris; e-flux, New York City; Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Para Site, Hong Kong; 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney; and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila. Abad’s artworks are part of a number of important collections, including Tate, UK; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hawai’i State Art Museum, Honolulu; Singapore Art Museum; Kadist, Paris/San Francisco and Art Jameel, Dubai.
Artist profile of Pio Abad
Pio Abad is an artist born into a family that spearheaded the fight against the Philippine dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. The most nuanced facets of his politics and art were shaped by these social contexts; in other words, the past has formed the basis of his work, which is profoundly influenced by events taking place in the Philippines, where Abad was born and raised. His art is derived from a family story interwoven with the country’s history, creating a personal and political whole.
The artworks of Abad, who left the Philippines in 2004, are subject to various reinterpretations of that political past across media. Often, artists have to leave their country in order to engage in artistic activism. After reviewing the profiles of many people, it seems that a gathering of such artists who left their countries will take place at the Venice Biennale. However, there are also people like Vera Tamari who do not have to leave their own country, Palestine, to engage in artistic activism. Nevertheless, the majority are those who have moved abroad in search of safer spaces, and Pio Abad is one of them.
The best thing about Pio Abad’s artwork is that it blurs the line between activism and art. Pio Abad’s personal experiences of responding to and opposing Ferdinand Marcos’ autocratic reign have always been included in his artistic endeavours. Protests against the violence and corruption of this regime that Abad’s parents experienced, each as a member of a group of young social-democratic activists, are among the elements functioning at different levels, drawing upon methods of creating objects that speak against authoritarianism and of turning objects into its representatives.
Through replicas and depictions of the belongings of the Ferdinand Marcos family, acquired during his regime, the political era and its ‘poor copies’ are presented as a new form of politics.
Politics of Pio Abad’s Artworks
Pio Abad primarily creates replicas of the expensive jewellery and other objects used by the Marcos family, especially by Imelda Marcos, the dictator’s wife. It is said that when Ronald Reagan offered shelter to the Marcos family, Imelda Marcos smuggled her precious diamond jewellery in her grandchild’s diaper bag. Pio Abad argues that when many such smuggled items are returned as art, unpacking them reveals fantasies of capitalism and dictatorship.
The fantasies of the dictator’s wife, the expensive items she has accumulated, bear the imprints of a people crushed, of their sweat. They bear the marks of the entire nation’s hard work. This is what is transformed into diamonds and real estate investments abroad. In those items, in their replicas, an attempt is made to explore the possibility of art, and without losing any of the jewellery design’s beauty, they are turned into both a political instrument and an artwork. ‘Even though those ornaments and objects are beautiful, they might be vessels of painful stories,’ Pio Abad himself says, and through intimacy with objects, the artist here tries to unpack the complex history of colonialism as well.
The real mission is to translate the historical experiences shaped by archival research into objects and, thus, into art. The records embedded in archival documents, their sketches, history, and narratives are turned into objects and transformed into artworks. They bear the imprint of dictatorship in a way that can be called ‘returning autocracy,’ stamped by its political values.
The artworks in the exhibition “To Those Sitting in Darkness” are noteworthy for their political undercurrent. Those artworks highlight cross-border connections between historical events, individuals, and contemporary life. The artist expresses their political opinions and worries from an unbounded location where political events and history collide. Here, Abad’s political, poetic, and personal work challenges accepted beliefs and viewpoints while providing a potent critique of how many museums gather, present, and interpret the artefacts they own. Art is increasingly reflecting and continuing archival study.
The artist focuses on people whose histories have been marginalised, unexplained, disregarded, or forgotten in this project, which was made using items found by the University of Oxford. They locate lost sounds that must be recovered, turn them into artefacts, and present them as art. Abad also drew Prince Giolo, a tattooed Filipino slave who was transported to Oxford in the 1680s and shown as an exotic novelty in taverns and other locations, from the collections of St. John’s College. Eleven marble engravings of Giolo’s tattooed hand are displayed on the gallery’s walls, serving as a poignant reminder of his frail humanity.
“Fear of Freedom Makes Us See Ghost” (2022) emphasises what has been erased or forgotten. This direction stems from a family story intertwined within the history of a country that started in the area where this museum and institution are located. In his artistic practice, Abad adopts the same critical voice, highlighting the Marcoses’ opulent lifestyle. As cast, printed, engraved, and painted objects, he converts their palpable extravagance into another kind of physicality. These appropriations are meticulously crafted using images, documents, historical data, auction catalogues, and verifiable evidence.
“Is it morning for you yet?” The words, pictures, artefacts, and actions of former world leaders are examined in this exhibition through Pio Abad’s archival and museological research, and they are inscribed in the historical traumas that have moulded our present. In his 1898 essay “Distant Possessions: The Parting of the Ways,” first published in the North American Review, the artist explores Andrew Carnegie’s stance as an industrialist and anti-imperialist at the 58th Carnegie International.
In this instance, Carnegie opposed the United States’ annexation of the Philippines and even offered to purchase the nation’s independence for $20 million, which was the amount the US paid to acquire the Philippines from Spain as part of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which put an end to the Spanish-American War. Carnegie’s main argument was that industry, not the government, should be responsible for generating revenue from these areas, as the small annual income did not justify the cost of “running” the colony.
Artists can create art only through objects. It is through them that they put forward their arguments. Objects include their history, as well as the history of the neglect inscribed in them. What Pio Abad seeks to bring through his art is a forgotten history, one that is also connected to colonialism and that resurfaces; these are objects and historical records. They are bringing new dimensions, new history, and forgotten memories. The fact that such an artist is participating in the Venice Biennale offers an opportunity to revisit and discuss various historical issues, including autocratic rule.
Krispin Joseph PX, a poet and journalist, completed an MFA in art history and visual studies at the University of Hyderabad and an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from the Central European University, Vienna.
