In celebration of the opening of the exhibition Pacita Abad, the Walker staged two panel discussions that explore the artist’s complex relationships to her diasporic identity and exuberant material practice.

This first panel explores the critical position of Abad (US, b. Philippines, 1946–2004) as a Filipina American artist, working in crucial periods in the Philippines and the United States that deeply questioned identity and nation.

BIOS
Eungie Joo is curator and head of contemporary art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Joo has served as a curatorial advisor to the 2022 Aichi Triennale: Still Alive; artistic director of the 5th Anyang Public Art Project/APAP 5 (2016); curator of Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible (2015); and commissioner of the Korean Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, Condensation: Haegue Yang (2009). From 2007-2012, she led the Museum as Hub initiative at the New Museum and organized the 2012 Generational Triennial: The Ungovernables. Joo was Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Intern for Diversity in the Arts and curatorial assistant at the Walker Art Center from 1996–1998.

Angel Velasco Shaw is a media artist, educator, curator, and cultural organizer living in New York and Manila. Her documentaries have screened across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Casa Asia, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. She has curated contemporary art and film exhibitions in New York and the Philippines, and produced multidisciplinary projects in New York, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Publications include Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of An Imperial Dream: 1899–1999 (2002, co-edited with Luis H. Francia) and the forthcoming anthology Markets of Resistance (2023).

Stephanie Syjuco works in photography, sculpture, and installation, moving from handmade and craft-inspired mediums to digital editing and archive excavations. Recently, she has focused on how photography and image-based processes are implicated in the construction of racialized, exclusionary narratives of history and citizenship. Born in the Philippines, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has exhibited widely, including at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. She is an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and resides in Oakland, California.