A Thoughtful Gift
2019 - Sculpture (Sculpture)
33.02 x 25.4 x 1.91 cm
Pio Abad
A Thoughtful Gift by Pio Abad is based on a version of a letter written by the former First Lady of the United States, Nancy Reagan to the former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. Written in 1986, the letter assures Marcos of their safety from persecution in the United States, following widespread anti-government protests across the Philippines. The Marcoses were granted exile in the United States by the Reagan administration and they eventually fled to Honolulu. The gesture of inscribing the letter onto marble functions as symbolic recuperation and concretizes the complicity, extent, and aftermath of the Marcos-Reagan friendship. It serves as a reminder of the flippant deployment of protection from the United States defense at the highest level, long after the country’s independence and despite recommendations from the State Department to remove Marcos from power. A Thoughtful Gift rings the bell on historical revisionism, erected as a marker for histories that have been unintentionally or intentionally altered.
In his practice, Pio Abad looks into the social and political significance of objects usually consigned to the sidelines of history. Abad uses different media such as textile, drawing, installation, and photography, and employs strategies of appropriation to extract alternative readings and repressed historical events. Abad ties threads of complicity between events, ideologies and people. His artworks glide seamlessly between these histories, enacting quasi-fictional combinations with their leftovers and weaving together threads of complicity between events, ideologies, and people. Abad was artist-in-residence at KADIST San Francisco from April to June 2019, where he conducted research into narratives of exile and displacement from the 1970s and 80s that brought Filipinos to California.
