Silverlens, Manila
28 March - 29 April 2017

In COUNTERNARRATIVES, Pio Abad continues his engagement with Philippine political history, specifically looking at the problematic cultural legacy of the Marcos dictatorship in light of recent attempts to rehabilitate this dark chapter in the nation's history. This new body of work reconfigures familiar narratives and excavates dismantled idonographies in an attempt to understand the seemingly breathtaking pace at which this history has unravelled.

The title of the exhibition is taken from a collection of short stories and novellas by the American author John Keene that draws upon multiple accounts - memoirs, newspaper articles and speculative fiction - to offer new perspectives on the past and present. Abad uses the same approach throughout the exhibition, translating stories from historical residue into images and objects that reflect on acts of mythmaking, monumentalising and forgetting.

Accessing and reimaginging these artefacts from our collective political imagination, Pio Abad raises questions about how they might play into our current lives, when images that were once ridiculous now seem lethal and objects that used to be fragments of the past now appear to be glimpses into an increasingly perilous future.