Pio Abad talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. 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. 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. In recent years, he 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.

He 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. He 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?

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. Watch the full-length video version of this interview on the YouTube channels of The Art Newspaper and Bloomberg Connects.

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