Pio Abad is a Filipino multidisciplinary artist based in London whose practice uses drawing, painting, textiles, installation and archival research to examine the political lives of objects. Born and raised in the Philippines, he draws on histories of colonialism, dictatorship, migration and cultural loss, often tracing how personal possessions, museum artefacts and symbols of wealth carry wider narratives of power. His work combines close material observation with counter-historical storytelling, bringing suppressed or overlooked connections between people, institutions and events into view.
Abad remains highly active internationally in 2026. His project Vanwa was presented at the third Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, where works connected Ivatan language, displacement and remembrance with histories of colonial violence. He is also an invited artist in the 61st Venice Biennale, In Minor Keys, running from May to November 2026. There, new and recent drawings engage with looted and displaced objects, including museum holdings connected with the Philippines and other colonised cultures. Across these projects, Abad treats archives not as neutral records but as contested spaces, using art to restore intimacy, memory and political meaning to objects shaped by extraction and loss.