BIOGRAPHY Widely defined by her use of color, something she remained adamant about from her early studies, Pacita Abad (1946-2004) pioneered new forms of materiality in her work, illustrated in one instance by her widely celebrated trapunto paintings, a form of quilted painting the artist originated by stitching and stuffing her painted canvases instead of stretching them over a frame. Accumulating materials, techniques, and subjects from her vast travels, oftentimes within the same composition, her work predates contemporary discourses around postcolonial feminisms, globalization and transnationalism, offering an intuitive understanding of the mutability and heritability of traditions in the places she lived. Abad is the subject of a major traveling retrospective, opening at the Walker Arts Center in 2023. ASIAN ABSTRACTIONS SERIES Training in oriental brush painting during a trip to Korea in 1983, Abad spent the next few years spinning the traditional emphasis on line into a complex, colorful vocabulary. Repurposing the training sheets she produced during her lessons, rich with dark lines, Abad reworked these forms with colors, painting them, before copying the patterns to canvas on her return to her studio. She turned this series into trapunto paintings, which she often returned to throughout the rest of her working life. Taking the genesis of her material inspiration, Abad was able to offer a new path and a distinctive formal vocabulary for her work along the lines of cultural appreciation. Asian Abstractions speaks to Abad's prophetic ability to demonstrate the mutability of tradition in the present, as well as her interest in inter-Asia solidarity and cultural dialogue.