Pacita Abad: SFMOMA

Pacita Abad opens at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) today, marking the second destination of the major North American retrospective of the influential Filipino-American artist. Featuring more than 40 major works, this exhibition is the most significant U.S. presentation that chronicles the artist’s 32-year multifaceted art practice. Best known for her trapuntos, a form of quilted painting made by stitching and stuffing her canvases as opposed to stretching them over a wood frame, Pacita made a vast number of artworks that traverse a diversity of subject matter. Pacita centered the triumphs and adversities of people on the periphery of power, as seen in her Social Realist, Immigrant Experience, and Masks and Spirits series, while also creating intricately constructed underwater scenes to abstract compositions. Pacita’s vibrant material and conceptual concerns are as urgent today as they were three decades ago. 

This iteration in San Francisco is meaningful for the life of the artist, as after leaving the Philippines to escape political persecution due to her activism against the Marcos regime, Pacita intended to move to Madrid to pursue a degree in law, but a stop in San Francisco to visit relatives became a long-term stay. 1970s San Francisco was a hub of counterculture and social movements. This is where Pacita met Asian and Latin American immigrants who had left their home countries for economic or socio-political reasons. Pacita immersed herself in the local art scene, deciding to forgo her law studies, changing the trajectory of her life.

This exhibition will have on view SFMOMA’s recent acquisition of Pacita Abad’s trapunto, “If My Friends Could See Me Now” (1993).