Pio Abad was born in Manila, the Philippines in 1983. He received his BA in his homeland and in 2004 immigrated to Glasgow, Scotland to further his art education. He later moved to London to continue his training, establishing himself as a multi-media artist whose practice often explores themes of migration. In 2024 Abad was shortlisted for the Turner Prize.
Artist Pio Abad was born in Manila, the Philippines in 1983. His father Butch was the Budget Secretary in the government and his mother Dina was a Batanes (archipelago province in the Philippines) Representative. Both were trade unionists and anti-dictatorship activists. Abad's artistic foundation was laid in the Philippines, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of the Philippines (2002-4). Seeking to broaden his skills, he immigrated to Scotland, graduating with a BA (Honours) in Painting & Printmaking from the Glasgow School of Art (2004-7). Abad then moved to London and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools (RAS), where he completed a Masters in Fine Art (2009-12).
Abad’s practice is demonstrably influenced by his Philippine heritage, centring on the nexus between personal narratives and the political implications of objects. His expansive oeuvre includes diverse media, from drawing to installation, unearthing obscured or marginalised historical narratives and exposing hidden connections between events, ideologies, and individuals. His art is shaped by both contemporary events in his native Philippines and his family history, and reflects his parents’ dictatorship resistance of the 1970s and 80s, the enduring need to preserve and commemorate this legacy serving as the bedrock of his creative practice. In addition to his own career and nurturing of the family history, Abad actively champions the legacy of his aunt, Filipino-American artist, Pacita Abad, by curating exhibitions of her work, further contributing to her legacy by co-editing the publication Pacita Abad: A Million Things to Say in 2021.
From 2014 Abad has worked on a research project entitled The Collection of Jane Ryan and William Saunders, spanning a number of solo and group exhibitions, and which explores the cultural legacy of former Philippine dictators, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos (Jane Ryan and William Saunders were pseudonyms used by the couple) and their vast collections of art and artefacts. Other of his works speak to the immigrant experience. The installation Oh! Oh! Oh! (A Universal History of Iniquity) , exhibited in 2012 in London, takes a global approach and critiques the glossy facade of progress and its unstable foundations. It juxtaposes a symbol of Filipino political excess – an image of a chandelier from a luxury hotel – with cheap, mass-produced gold-coloured, plastic items that appear Middle Eastern and, seemingly luxurious, but are in reality purchased from cheap shops in East London frequented by immigrants. His solo exhibition Kiss the Hand that Cannot Bite which opened in 2019 as part of a residency in San Francisco, USA, explored, among other issues, the Filipino American diaspora and what it means to be a ‘good immigrant’, especially when the new homeland also becomes a new resistance site. In 2022-3, his work was part of the 58th Carnegie International Exhibition, Is it Morning for You Yet?’, exploring the movement of people, motifs, objects and concepts though a historical lens, with an aim of emancipation, and with Abad’s contribution focused on the idea of historical trauma. Laji No. 97, his mixed media installation presented in 2023 at the 13th Taipei Biennial. examined Abad's Ivatan background, an indigenous community from the northern Philippine islands of Batanes and Babuyan. The Tao (Yami) people from Taiwan's Lanyu island believe that their forebears came from Batanes, fleeing there to escape Spanish colonisers. When Abad, who lives in London, visited Lanyu, he felt a surprising personal connection to this unfamiliar location. His 2024 exhibition, entitled To Those Sitting in the Darkness, at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, the second in its NOW series, in which contemporary artists create new work in response to the historical collections, Abad displayed strategically positioned historical artifacts, amassed during the colonial era, in dialogue with his drawings, engravings, and sculptures, creating an intricate tapestry woven from personal narratives of multicultural migration exploring the dynamics of cultural displacement.
In 2012 Abad was a finalist for the Dazed and Confused Emerging Artist Awards and the Deutsche Bank Award for Creative Enterprise. In 2015, he won the Ateneo Art Awards – Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art, awarded to artists under the age of 36, and in 2024, Abad was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Abad has also lectured, presenting two talks in 2018: ‘What to Let Go?’ at the Para Site International Conference in Hong Kong and ‘The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders’, held at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. In 2019, he participated in an artist's residency at the Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco, USA. Pio Abad lives and works between Glasgow and London. His work is not currently represented in the UK public domain.