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Pacita Abad

Exhibition catalogue design for Pacita Abad at the Walker Art Center — Published on the occasion of Pacita Abad’s her first-ever retrospective, this volume surveys 32 years of Pacita Abad’s multifaceted, visually dazzling, and politically prescient works blending fabric and painting.

It includes new research and writing by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Ruba Katrib, Nancy Lim, Matthew Villar Miranda, Victoria Sung and Xiaoyu Weng, an edited oral history about the artist’s life and work by Pio Abad and Victoria Sung, and never-before-seen artworks and archival materials.

Exhibition Tour
• Walker Art Center, Minneapolis: April 15–September 3, 2023
• SF MoMA: October 21, 2023–January 28, 2024
• MoMA PS1, New York: March 28–September 2, 2024
• Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto: October 12, 2024–January 19, 2025

Pacita Abad (1946–2004) was born in Batanes, Philippines. Because of her activism against the Marcos regime, she was forced to leave for the US in 1970, where she studied Asian history at the University of San Francisco and painting at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, and the Art Students League in New York City. Abad created more than 5,000 artworks and had over 60 solo exhibitions in the US, Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America.

Curated by Victoria Sung, Phyllis C. Wattis Senior Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and former associate curator, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center; with Matthew Villar Miranda, curatorial fellow, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center
2023 AIGA Book + Cover Design Winner

“The strongest covers really connected to the content of the book, while the book designs displayed a penchant for material choices that really emphasized the physicality or object quality of the book...for me, there was a greater overall sophistication in book design, with a mix of aesthetically beautiful and graphically brash approaches in the final choices. ”

– Andrew Satake Blauvelt
AIGA 50 Books | 50 Covers Chair
I always see the world through color, although my vision, perspective, and paintings are constantly influenced by new ideas and changing environment.

—Pacita Abad
Her horse,
I would say,
was color

— Natalia Himmirska
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