The Uncontainable Multicultural Artist Pacita Abad
Originally, I covered Filipino artist Pacita Abad in a mid-course short paper titled, "Pacita Abad: The Imbalance of Tradition and Modernism." In
which I talked about how her work shows an unequal power dynamic between tradition and modernism and conveys her perspective as an immigrant. The foundation for Abad’s work (such as the materials) lies within tradition; however, the subjects and style stray into modernism. I focused on tradition vs modernism as I used to believe that modernism jeopardizes tradition and vice versa. That they could only take from eachother. However, I found in Abad's work that rather than trying to balance the two, the visual imbalance could be reflective of her own identity as an immigrant.
By the end of the course, I knew I wanted to cover Abad again as I hadn't gone deep enough. My final paper, "The Uncontainable Multicultural Artist Pacita
Abad," covered how labels limitting an artist to their country of origin can do more harm than good. In, "The Buddha Goes Global: Some Thoughts Towards a Transnational Art
Pacita Abad, L.A. Liberty, 1992. Acrylic, cotton yarn, plastic buttons, mirrors, gold thread, painted cloth on stitched and padded canvas. Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2022. Source: Vogue
History,”* Claire Harris defines her term transnational artist. She analyzes Gonkar Gyatso's My Identity series. Each picture in the series shows the influence of different cultural identities people have/ could give him. When looking at them as a whole, one can see how different each is while having consistent elements. For example, in each picture, he always has his black toolbox. She comes to the conclusion that referring to artists by their country of origin cannot accurately define them. Gyastso's international experiences blend in a way that Harris refers to as transnational. I applied her term to Pacita Abad and explored how one country is not enough to define Abad’s work as a whole.
Gonkar Gyatso, My Identity 1–4, 2003. Photographic print on paper. Marshall H. Gould Fund. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- An interesting side note that I did not add to my paper is that, much like tradition vs modernism, I have wondered if globalization jeopardizes local context. This is something I originally considered looking into, but found that these multicultural artists blur between these boundaries and would take my paper off topic.
​​​​​​ I focus mostly on Abad's art installation, Masks from Six Continents. The installation included six textiles conveying themes from the six inhabited continents: Africa, North America, South America, Oceania, and Asia, all of which show cultures of indigenous groups in their respective continents. In contrast, the European Mask reflects a blend of cultural elements modernized through abstraction. This piece does not subscribe to one continent over the other. Instead, the piece can only be defined as multicultural. Her themes are too broad to limit her to one country; she is uncontainable.
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Pacid Abad, Masks from Six Continents, ordered the same way as the 1991 Washington D.C. debut, about 50-foot-long, originally displayed in D.C's central transit hub.
Ending my paper, I cover the Indian artist Sher-Gil briefly, stating she too is a borderless multicultural artist, limited to being an Indian or immigrant artist. In doing so, I argue that region-locking artists to one country is a common enough issue to evoke change within the art space.
When speaking about her experiences from the many countries she's visited, Abad states, “I learn so much from them, and they learn so much from me, it’s sort of a collaborative thing.”** This quote is reminiscent of Gyatso and his black box in that an artist will always have traces of their past experiences in their work.
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* Harris, Clare. “The Buddha Goes Global: Some Thoughts Towards a Transnational Art History.” Art History, vol. 29, iss. 4 (September 2006), 698-720.
** Kaul, Kavery. Wild at Art. 1995. An Asian Women United Presentation, a riverfilms