Pacita Abad’s work is characterised by the effusive use of colour and extensive range of techniques and materials influenced and inspired by her contact with people and cultures during her travels. Abad, along with her husband, a development economist whose work necessitated extensive travel, lived in eleven countries and travelled to sixty-two. Her interest in the immigrant experience inspired a series using her trapunto painting technique. Haitians Waiting At Guantanamo Bay (1994) depicts the hopeful wait behind barbed wires, leaving behind empty skiffs and a town with sunlit skies and palm trees. During this time, Abad also created Contemplating Flor (1995) and Filipinas in Hong Kong (1995). You Have to Blend in Before You Stand Out (1995) is a large trapunto of a woman dressed in a sarong that matches a Yankees baseball cap and Bulls basketball jersey, illustrating the internal struggle that immigrants and their families experience when integrating into a new society. Abad herself became a naturalised US citizen twenty-four years after arriving in the US.
This is the first time the work of Pacita Abad is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Joselina Cruz
