#PacitaAbad
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stove-g-art-poetry.bsky.social
Tried something a little different with parentheses here. A new ekphrastic poem after a Pacita Abad work that is so simultaneously playful and frightening, I fell in love with it immediately. Let me know what you think!

#poetry #poem #pacitaabad #ekphrasticpoetry #poets
My Fear of Night Diving after Pacita Abad You and me both. A writhing host of fins and rubber limbs (in reference to myself) imbibe on darker foam. Acrylics lathered into the palette’s purples loom. Fish (to me) are barely more than choices (that I ignore) at weddings or a metaphor; unthought-of and rarely literal. Night diving is here seen as an actual fear one faces. (I imagine my sad, pale, visage as a poor, unfortunate, fish's inverse; an ungainly man ham-handed into places.) (True horror lies in the sights I cannot see, an unplumbed sea’s mysteries unregarded, as the divers I can never be. Fear finds me inland, keeping far from shore. My Fear of Night Diving bites at the periphery of my ocean's floor.)
February 4, 2026 at 12:33 PM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“If My Friends Could See Me Now” by Pacita Abad (Filipina American) - Acrylic, painted canvas & gold yarn on stitched, padded canvas / 1991 - SFMOMA (San Francisco, California) #WomenInArt #PacitaAbad #Abad #SelfPortrait #WomensArt #WomenArtists #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #SFMOMA #Trapunto
A quilted, poster-bright scene stacks worlds like cut-out memories with a band of high-rise city buildings under a dark, stormy sky. The phrase “AN AMERICAN DREAM” is painted in all caps like a billboard. Centered below is a brown-skinned woman with long black hair and a large red knit cap. She faces us with arms folded while avoiding our gaze, wearing a striped top edged with bead-like details. Around her, smaller vignettes flicker like an office desk with papers, a grocery cart crowded with goods, a white house behind a picket fence, a red car with each stitched into a padded surface that makes the images feel raised, touchable, and heavy. A looping cord of gold yarn snakes down the right side like Lombard Street, curling toward a small, haystack-like mound at the bottom edge. Artist Pacita Abad’s trapunto technique turns the “dream” into something you can almost measure as it swells, puckers, and presses forward, as if aspiration itself has weight. The montage reads like a catalog of promises often offered to newcomers such as work, property, consumption, mobility, the glitter of a skyline, yet the central figure’s guarded posture complicates the slogan. Her crossed arms and steady, unsmiling gaze suggest vigilance as much as arrival. It’s pride and self-possession, but also the need to brace against scrutiny, exclusion, or the fear of falling through the seams. The figure can be read as a proxy self-portrait for Abad who was born in Basco, Batanes, Philippines. She is one body standing in for many migrant lives while the stitched construction mirrors how immigration is often lived in fragments, repairs, and continuities carried on the skin. By fusing painting with cloth and embroidery-like lines, Abad refuses a single, tidy narrative. Instead, she builds an identity that is assembled rather than granted and is bright, resilient, and insistently present to ask who gets to claim “AN AMERICAN DREAM” and what it costs to keep believing in it.
December 14, 2025 at 5:11 PM
brandteisner.bsky.social
“Evil Eye” by Pacita Abad. #quilting #quiltart #contemporyquilting #textileart #textiles #craft #finecraft #traditionalcraft #evileye #pacitaabad
October 9, 2025 at 8:08 PM
rebeccaupjohn.bsky.social
Saw the Philippine-born #PacitaAbad 's vibrant, inspiring show at the #AGO today. Her trapunto pieces, especially the masks and spirit figures and the underwater scenes were my favourite. Highly recommend seeing this if you are in #Toronto. Till the 19th.
a brightly multi-coloured trapunto piece of a stylized spirit figure A large trapunto piece of an underwater scene including an octopus, creatures/fish with sharp teeth in grays, blacks, reds hangs in a blue wall
January 9, 2025 at 11:52 PM
anttree.bsky.social
Selections from Pacita Abad exhibit at AGO.

#art #photo #ago #toronto #artgallery #ontario #pacitaabad #smile #octopus #anttree
December 31, 2024 at 5:00 PM
philipcollier.bsky.social
Alkaff Bridge, located at Robertson Quay, Singapore. Paint by artist Pacita Abad. There is peace to be found in those colors and lapping waves 🙂

#Singapore #PacitaAbad #RobertsonQuay
December 21, 2024 at 10:49 AM
mercifully.bsky.social
Highly recommend visiting The AGO to see Pacita Abad exhibit. Beautiful, colourful - her use of different styles, the scope of her work and extraordinary detail is absolutely brilliant.
#Pacitaabad
#AGO
December 13, 2024 at 3:26 PM
rjdurocher.bsky.social
I love my work, getting to make a fish watercolour pencil drawing based off the work of artist #pacitaabad
December 11, 2024 at 11:27 AM
magdalenaprovis.bsky.social
You must go to see #PacitaAbad art on AGO… magnetic colours and stories 👇🏽 #Toronto #TorontoILoveYou
November 30, 2024 at 6:41 PM
paolokagaoan.bsky.social
More details of #PacitaAbad ‘s work, an #artist who basically lived my dream life.
Refugees in Bangladesh, a detail in Pacita Abad’s work. A portrait that looks like layered fabric, by Pacita Abad. Multimedia work celebrating sex workers in Ermita. Pacita Abad. Fabric work showing underwater life in the Philippines, by Pacita Abad.
November 24, 2024 at 4:44 PM
adamlauder.bsky.social
1-2 & 4) Pacita Abad ; and 3) Sonia Boyce (in partnership with @TorontoBiennial) @agotoronto 🔥🔥🔥

#pacitaabad #soniaboyce
November 20, 2024 at 11:12 PM
poppersthepony.bsky.social
Caught the last week of #PacitaAbad at sfmoma- so beautiful with buttons & broken glass sewn into massive quilted paintings. Get there if you can. I loved seeing how engaged viewers were pointing out & discussing.
Pacita Abad painting after she began scuba diving Painting by Pacita Abad at sfmoma Painting by Pacita Abad of life in Manilla- sex work is work!!
January 26, 2024 at 2:42 PM