Mañiañinu

Join artist Pio Abad and curator and writer Erin Robideaux Gleeson for Mañiañinu: To appear as a reflection; to be mirrored, a live research session that meanders with Ivatan song and documentary photography through past, present and future wet migrations, partially shared language, indigeneity between colonial escape and national fictions, archeology as speculative reconstruction, and more. Followed by a light brunch inspired by Austronesian food cultures.

This event will conclude Pio Abad’s FD13 week-long residency in Minneapolis, following his celebration with and contributions to his aunt Pacita Abad’s solo exhibition, publication and programs at the Walker Art Center (April 15, 2023 – September 30, 2023). The materials and ideas engaging this live research are toward Abad’s new commission for Small World, the 13th Taipei Biennale (November 18, 2023 – March 24, 2024).

Pio Abad (b.1983) is an artist whose work is concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects. His wide-ranging body of work mines alternative or repressed historical events and offers counternarratives that draw out threads of complicity between incidents, ideologies and people. Deeply informed by unfolding events in the Philippines, where the artist was born and raised, his work emanates from a family narrative woven into the nation’s story. He has exhibited at the 58th Carnegie International; the 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennial; Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Kadist, San Francsico; the 2nd Honolulu Biennial; 12th Gwangju Biennial; 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney and Gasworks, London. Forthcoming projects include Small World, the 13th Taipei Biennial and a solo exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Abad’s works are part of a number of important collections including Tate, UK; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hawai’i State Art Museum, Honolulu; Singapore Art Museum; Kadist, Paris/San Francisco and Art Jameel, Dubai. Abad is also the curator of the estate of his aunt, the Filipino American artist Pacita Abad.

FD13 residency for the arts invites national and international multidisciplinary artists to Minnesota to create new, experimental work and present it live. Founded in 2016 as an itinerant program, FD13 foregrounds collaboration, experimentation, and hospitality, working closely with local partners from wide ranging fields of thought to craft individuated residences that provide artist fees, living and working space, and site-specific research and production support. FD13 is a registered nonprofit arts organization directed by curator and writer Erin Robideaux Gleeson and supported by a board of directors.

Image: Documentary photographs by Pio Abad (2023). Left: Jade artefacts excavated in Hualien; Right: Tatala boats of the Tao (Yami) people, Lanyu Island.