Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes were two young leaders of the Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino (KDP) who spearheaded the fight for social justice in the United States and democracy in the Philippines. They were murdered in Seattle on the 1st of June 1981 and their killings were eventually linked to the dictatorship through the expenses of a certain Mabuhay Corporation, a San Francisco held company. The statements showed the regime had illegally spent one million dollars in the United States between 1979 and 1981 on various activities, including political campaigns and a mysterious transaction labelled “special security projects.”

For Silme and For Gene are the first works in an ongoing series of paintings that bear witness to the struggles of those who devoted their lives to fighting the dictatorship and its cruel legacy. Abad appropriates the book cover designs of Ferdinand Marcos’ manifestos- which detailed his political motives, including the defense of his decision to place the Philippines under martial law in 1972—but erases the textual basis of Marcos’ political fictions. In reducing them to form and color, he transforms them, as paintings, into austere emblems of a nation that never was.

In this way, the paintings become memorials, abstract elegies to political leaders, community organisers, and student activists who resisted and worked towards imagining a space for freedom under the direst of circumstances: Karina David, Archie Intengan, Bobby Gana, Chito Gascon, Lilli Hilao, Evelio Javier, Boyet Mijares, Jesse Robredo, Dinky Soliman, and Noel Tolentino.

For Dina I and For Dina II, are dedicated to the memory of the artist’s mother, who died in 2017. This project begins with Abad’s mother’s gaze, and, in many ways, it is her loss that has since shaped it. Over the past ten years, his work has become not just an exhaustive attempt at imagining reparation, but also an exhausting, yet necessary, process of grieving.