Pio Abad, unexamined histories, and the Turner Prize
With works that implicate imperialist perceptions and perspectives, Pio Abad weaves transhistorical narratives in an exhibition shortlisted by Tate Britain for the 2024 Turner Prize.
Words Pio Angelo Ocampo
May 6, 2024
Gallery view with For the Sphinx (tiara) and I am singing a song that can only be borne after losing a country. © Hannah Pye for the Ashmolean
Since its founding in 1984, the jury of the Turner Prize has shortlisted four artists for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation. For its 40th year, Tate Britain shortlists Pio Abad along with Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur, and Delaine Le Bas for the UK’s most prestigious award for contemporary art.
Based in London, Abad’s To Those Sitting in Darkness off 1 ers a way of seeing that questions how many museums collect, display, and interpret the objects they hold. This exhibition, a part of the Ashmolean NOW at the University of Oxford, becomes a space where the past and the present come together. Ink drawings, swords, tiaras, and etchings, both old and new, provide viewers with an encounter with objects that have long been sitting in darkness, making a case for contemporary art to look, think, and engage with historical collections.
John Savage (active 1683–1700). Portrait of Prince Giolo, Son of King Moangis, 1692. Etching on paper. © St John’s College, Oxford.
Pio Abad (b.1983), Giolo's Lament, 2023. Gallery view of eleven engravings on marble, Dimensions variable. © Pio Abad. Courtesy of the artist.
An example of such a historical narrative in the UK’s archives is that of Prince Giolo. Covered from neck to toe with tattoos, we can see the prince in Mindanao in a print of an advertisement to see him exhibited in various pubs in Fleet Street. His story, Abad mentions, was one of the first recorded instances of the transport of bodies for entertainment and labor. Giolo’s body is then buried not far from the Ashmolean, and later on, a fragment of his skin is put on the College of Anatomy. With histories held within Prince Giolo, Abad then created eleven etchings on marble, focusing on Giolo’s arm in a gesture of reaching. As such, he rescues him from the archive, not as a curiosity, but as a human being.
Within the Ashmolean, Abad’s work puts the museum on the stand, making a case for them as spaces of loss, silence, and exclusion. “His visually alluring and thought-provoking work underlines how art is the ideal medium to rediscover, debate, and liberate diasporic objects and give them a new cultural platform, memory, and voice,” said curator Dr. Lena Fritsch. And given the recognition as a shortlist for the Turner Prize, Abad reiterates: “My exhibition endeavors to illuminate struggles and stories that have been kept in the dark for too long, and I am delighted that this nomination can shine an even brighter light on them.”
Ashmolean NOW: Pio Abad – To Those Sitting in Darkness is currently on view in Gallery 8, Lower Ground Floor, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK from February 10 to September 8, 2024. An exhibition of Abad’s work alongside fellow shortlisted artists Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur, and Delaine Le Bas will be held at Tate Britain from September 25, 2024 to February 16, 2025.
