Displaying the late artist's work at Jameel Arts Center

Pasita Abad.. faces and features in colorful fabrics

Basitaabad's work is based on a "quilting" technique that focuses on quilting and embroidery.

Photography: Patrick Castillo

Filipino artist Basita Abad's work is based on a special technique, called "turpunto", which takes its origins from the Italian word "trapuntari", a "quilting" technique that focuses on quilting and embroidery.

Through this technique, the late artist worked to embody people, their lives, their troubles, and diverse cultures through embroidered fabrics. She painted faces and displayed feelings in loud and abundant colors that make the space she works on full of life.

A collection of the artist's work was shown at the Jameel Arts Center in Dubai in an exhibition organized in collaboration with the Pasita Abad Art Foundation and the artist Bio Abad, and presented the works she produced between 1975 and 2004, highlighting how prolific the artist was, often completing her art collections simultaneously. .

The artist's work belongs to four main groups of her works, which are "Masks and Spirits", and the artist worked on them in the period between 1979-1991, "The Experience of Migrants" and dating back to the period between 1983-1995, and "Doors to Life", which are Works she produced in 1998, in addition to a group of abstract works from various stages of her career.

The Jameel Arts Center has also displayed a wide range of her work that reflects the diversity of themes and styles of painting she has addressed during her career, ranging from works inspired by ritual masks and ornamentation to paintings that reflect the daily realities of immigrants, overseas Filipino labor, and monumental abstractions.

Abad produced a large body of abstract works shaped during her travels, and her themes were inspired by her immersion in indigenous traditions and cosmology.

Working on these abstract paintings in tandem with her masks and social realist troponto works, these abstractions are transformed into productions rich in cultural allusions, rebelling against the boundaries between abstraction and representation created by Western styles in the art world, and celebrating style and decor as central to everyday life.

The key to understanding Abad's business is to understand how her life has affected travelling. Her intense curiosity and desire to learn from the people she met, whether learning the techniques of sewing and embroidery from fellow artists in the United States or from the women of Rabari in Rajasthan, formed the basis for understanding Abad's business. Her visual language, which prompted her to try, test, and work with these materials.

Through her work, we explore the distance from the simplistic appropriation or claim to own cultures. Her work is a true engagement with people and their social and material histories, driven by an understanding of what it means to live on the margins.

Throughout her career, Abad has crafted a rich formal vocabulary.

Her abstract works can be read through the various senses, as the mixing of the senses reflects the energy and vibrancy of colour, texture and music.

During an extensive period of travel through Kenya, Sudan, Egypt and the Congo in 1979, Abad was drawn to the folk art and traditional textiles of the peoples she encountered, collecting many pieces, whether they were tapestries, masks, baskets or beads.

She also traveled to Yemen, and she was clearly influenced by the shapes of doors in the region, as she embodied them in works of art that mimic the spirit.

The late artist's husband, Jack, told "Emirates Today": "Abad was characterized by being very fond of colors, in addition to her love for testing. She was exploring a lot through work, and traveled to many countries of the world, and she was inspired by her ideas and art from these travels."

Jack pointed out that she started in the Philippines after she studied art, and her family was working in the political field, and then she moved abroad, and began working on studying history and art, and the many travels contributed to the formation of her artistic work.

He pointed out that she was passionate about integrating fabrics and colors to highlight multiple cultures, and relied on filling and coloring fabrics.

biography

Basita Abad was born in Batanes, Philippines, in 1946, and died in Singapore in 2004. She studied painting at Corcoran College of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Art Student Association of New York, and has shown her work in numerous solo exhibitions, including Life on the Margins and Pacita Abad: Millions of Things to Say” at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila, “Circles in My Mind” at the Tyler Brent Institute of Singapore in Singapore, “Exploring the Soul” at the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta, and “The American Dream” at the National Museum For Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, and "Masks from Six Continents" at the Metro Arts Center in Washington, DC.

She has also participated in several group exhibitions, such as the exhibition “Minds Rise and Morale Harmonize” at the 13th Gwangju Biennale, and “Sweat” at Haus der Kunst in Munich, and other group exhibitions.

• Rebels against the boundaries between abstraction and representation, and celebrates style and decor, making them central to everyday life.

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