Pacita Abad: Underwater Wilderness

“I always see the world through color, although my vision, perspective, and paintings are constantly influenced by new ideas and changing environments.”
— Pacita Abad (1946–2004)

Tina Kim Gallery is pleased to present “Underwater Wilderness,” the gallery’s second solo show dedicated to the late Filipina-American artist Pacita Abad. Featuring eight monumental trapuntos, a form of textile-painting that Pacita pioneered, this exhibition offers a focused selection of significant work created between 1985 and 1989 from a small series inspired by the artist’s fantastical experiences scuba diving in the Philippines. The whimsical paintings originally debuted as an immersive installation in 1986 at the Ayala Museum in Manila, and will be reunited in New York for the first time since their 1987 display at the Philippine Center. On view at the gallery from June 27th to August 16th, this stirring presentation runs concurrently with Pacita’s major retrospective at MoMA PS1, which closes on September 2nd before traveling to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

The “Underwater Wilderness” series developed after Pacita learned to dive at the British Sub-Aquatic Club in Thailand in the 1980s. Prior to this, she had a fear of water after a traumatic childhood experience in which she nearly drowned. Conquering her aquaphobia, Pacita became a proficient scuba diver and made over 80 dives across the Philippines, from Sepoc Beach to Dumaguete, Puerto Galera, Apo Island, and the Hundred Islands. The wondrous sub-aquatic ecosystems that Pacita encountered during her dives provided ample inspiration for the inveterate colorist.

These dense, kaleidoscopic, and sensorial paintings—marked by Pacita’s signature vibrancy and visible stitching—transport viewers to a mesmerizing undersea locale. To portray the inspiring and lush marine environments that left her in awe, Pacita sewed pieces of fabric together to form complex and layered compositions before painting and embellishing the canvas. In Dumaguete’s Underwater Garden (1987), she clearly delineates parts of the reef through a laborious combination of stitching and stuffing while rendering other parts in impressionistic strokes to create the illusion of motion. In Shallow Gardens of Apo Reef (1986), fluorescent corals, sinuous vegetation, and diverse aquatic life emerge through a highly inventive use of found materials culminating in a maximalist, vertical composition.

An abiding interest in alternative, non-hegemonic systems of meaning connects Pacita’s diverse subject matter, from the politically charged “Immigrant Experience” works exploring the possibility of “third-world” solidarities to the idiosyncratic “Masks and Spirits” series tackling complex questions about the mutability of representation and tradition in modernity. Though described by critics as her least political body of work, “Underwater Wilderness” harkens back to the artist’s Ivatan roots and connection to Batanes, Philippines, where she was born and raised. The series can perhaps be read as Pacita’s bridging of personal and political histories and the “manifold lived realities” of the Philippines. After she led student demonstrations against dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the late ’60s, her parents encouraged her to complete her studies abroad after her family home was sprayed with bullets. She was only able to return to live in the Philippines in 1982 after twelve years away, and started this body of work the year before the fall of the kleptocratic regime in 1986.

For an artist whose multimodal life resists essentialization, “Underwater Wilderness” further complicates the discourse around her practice. When describing her diving experience, Pacita said that she felt like “an infidel intruding into somewhere sacred.” In a body of water where different currents both literal and metaphorical collide, Pacita found a space of liberation, recovery, and possibility.