Pio Abad’s The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders is a ten-year project that has traced the material hauntings of the Philippines’ dictatorial Marcos family. Employing a wide variety of media, from the more traditional forms of painting and photography to new innovations such as 3D printed sculpture and augmented reality, Abad has depicted the history of the Marcos dictatorship as a past that urgently needs to be made present. Beginning in 2012, The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders culminated in 2022 with the exhibition, Fear of Freedom Makes Us See Ghosts, at the Ateneo Art Gallery in Manila.
This accompanying and comprehensive publication features three essays by curators and art historians, Kathleen Ditzig, Katy Wan and Marian Pastor Roces, that present new contributions to the scholarship of Abad’s work, as well as an interview with Philippine popular historian Ambeth Ocampo and the most complete visual account of the Marcoses’ plunder.
Launching at Gasworks, where the project laid its early roots in 2014 with Abad’s solo exhibition Some are Smarter Than Others, the richly illustrated book is the most comprehensive survey of Abad’s practice to-date.
