Pio Abad

Pio Abad (b. 1983, Philippines) was born in Manila and lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2024); Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila (2022); Kadist, San Francisco (2019); 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2016). Group exhibitions include: 13th Taipei Biennial (2023); 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennial, Kerala (2022); and the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022). Abad was nominated for the 2024 Turner Prize.

Working across sculpture, installation, photography and print, Pio Abad employs strategies of appropriation to reveal the social and political implications of objects. Abad mines alternative or repressed historical events in order to unravel official accounts and draw out threads of complicity between other incidents, moments or people. Often taking on the form of domestic or decorative accessories, his artworks glide seamlessly between these histories, enacting quasi-fictional combinations with their leftovers.