Turner Prize nominee Pio Abad on forging historical connections, carrying on family legacy and why jewellery is powerful

The first object that he took as inspiration for his artwork was Powhatan’s mantle, a beautiful, ornamented deer hide that Native American Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas’s father, is believed to have given to the first British colonial settlers who came to Virginia. “For me, this captures the moment that the native people first encountered colonial settlers. What ensued after that exchange was a defining moment in colonial history,” the artist says of the establishment of America. “I kept on going back to that”. Abad’s take on the object is I am Singing a Song that can Only be Borne After Losing a Country (2023), a drawing in which the mantle is transformed into an imagined map of all the disposed and colonised lands in the world. The large illustration of the cloak is not only to scale, but also features Abad’s faithful recording of every detail of the mantel’s underside, with the intention of making every crack, stitch and crease visible. “Essentially, those cracks start looking like mountain ranges, and the stitches start looking like rivers, so this map kind of unfolded in front of me, like an atlas for the exhibition and my practice.”

Regardless of where Abad takes us in his work, his internal map always leads him back to his motherland. “Ultimately the guiding framework for me has always been the Philippines; it’s not necessarily because I want to make work about the nation, but the experience of the Philippines historically is such a fascinating example of what the world has gone through over time.” He cites curator Patrick Flores’s concept of the Philippines as a miniturisation: “An idea that it contains all these different universes and experiences and histories.”

Another inspiration for his show is closer to home: an etched print by John Savage, an artist who was active around 1683-1700. Portrait of Prince Giolo, Son of King Moangis features an intricately tattooed man from the southern Philippines who was bought as a slave and taken to England to be exhibited for entertainment. “There’s this incredible story of an individual, but also you then have this larger narrative of people being trafficked, [and] of histories of bodies of colour being trafficked for amusement and for ornamentation; within this one print there is a network of relationships,” Abad explains. In Giolo’s Lament (2023), he recreates Giolo’s tattooed hand through 11 engravings on marble, an enduring reminder of the subject’s vulnerability and fragile humanity.

As he unearths these connections, Abad often encounters serendipitous coincidences. For example, he learnt that Giolo was buried in an unmarked grave in a churchyard that’s a five-minute walk from the Ashmolean. The two sphinx sculptures that depict the Duchess of Marlborough and inspired the title For the Sphinx are at Blenheim Palace, just 20km from Oxford. Abad once lived in a flat in a building where the British army had collected weapons before loading them on a boat and sailing for Africa, a connection he became aware of while creating his version of the Benin Bronzes, a set of sculptures created from the 16th century onwards in the West African Kingdom of Benin (now in southern Nigeria) and plundered by the British in the 19th century; some are housed in the Oxford collection. “The idea of being intimately intertwined with all these histories that seem larger than us is fascinating but also it makes everything real and more palpable,” he says.

Amid today’s constant social and political upheaval, there’s an all-too-familiar feeling of dissonance and wondering what certain events have to do with us. A significant aspect of Abad’s practice is that, through art and aesthetics, he provides an accessible and appealing entry point into vast and complicated histories, the effects of which are still very much felt. “I think I’ve found a way of making these works incredibly seductive. As much as I talk about these larger histories, everything I talk about and depict is ergonomic to my body or a body. There’s a sense of scale that we can relate to, that doesn’t overwhelm us, because we understand what a tiara is, we understand its size; we know what the proportions of a hand are.”

Additionally, he taps into larger networks that emphasise community and collaboration. For example, in his Oxford show, he includes works by Filipina weaving collective Sinagtala, as well as some by American Filipino artist Carlos Villa, who questions the lack of Filipino history and art history taught and visible in western curriculums. “This need to create a network and also treat an exhibition as a way of creating a community is definitely becoming more and more important to how I approach art and exhibition making in general,” Abad says.

It’s also very much a family trait. Abad’s late aunt Pacita Abad was an incredibly well-established artist. A solo exhibition of her work is currently on view at MoMA PS1 in New York, including her trademark brightly coloured abstracted trapuntos—quilts commonly used and primarily woven by female weavers. In describing her work, Abad, who also manages her estate, says, “There’s this insatiable desire to inhale the world; to take in all these different materials, all these different indigenous traditions. What continuously strikes me with how she approached art-making is that she really wanted to be embedded in the communities that she was learning from.” Abad says his aunt was very deliberate in how she employed different motifs and was careful in appropriating textiles and creating works empathetically. “It’s the best way to draw people closer and invite them to have a closer connection with whatever it is—whether it’s dictatorial histories, indigenous textiles or an incredibly detailed piece of bronze jewellery, every artwork is an invitation.”

To each of her works the late artist would stitch a label on the back, with the date, title, materials and measurements of the artwork inscribed on it, providing as much information as possible, as her name and work weren’t as recognised as they are now.

“Even when no one was looking at her work, when no one was interested, she had this incredible sense of someone needing to access the work in the future, as if thinking ‘the world might not be ready for me while I’m alive, but eventually [it] will,’” says the artist who continues Pacita’s legacy both by preserving her work and through his own.

Like Pacita, Abad always thinks of his audience. “There’s a need to be generous with the stories that my works talk about. But the need to tell stories in an almost granular, almost journalistic detail is always there,” the artist says. “That’s also what’s allowed me to tell Pacita’s story—to get into the exquisite details of things.”

The desire to over-describe things and need to elaborate is very much evident in Abad’s Ashmolean show, as is the wish to provide as full a context as possible. “Many things—and many of these objects—are purposely forgotten by design or by the nature of human memory. Everything becomes an aid for memory and an invitation to remember,” the artist says of the high level of detail in this work.

His exhibition for the Turner Prize show, which will be on view at Tate Britain from September until February next year—the prize ceremony will take place there in December—will be a larger version of the Ashmolean exhibit. Abad’s work is a remedy to the dissonance we feel and an entry point into understanding how connected we are historically, and collectively impacted by current events, and how we will be by future events. As he puts it, his works are “artefacts for something yet to happen”.

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