“Filipina: A Racial Identitiy Crisis” is a painting done by Pacita Abad, an, itinerant, Ivatan and Philippine-American painter. The painting, being depicted by Abad’s handiwork, is showing two women with two different skin tones, and both are wearing cultural clothing that can be seen in the Philippines to show their cultural and indigenous groups. Abad’s painting was created with the use of lithograph with pulp-painted chine-collé and metallic powder on a 43 x 30 canvas. This painting, and all of her other paintings, have a major impact by her own journeys and experiences, along with her personal experiences as the subject within her painting. The theme surrounding her paintings are figurative political and social documentary paintings and later, media mixed paintings.
The painting is separated into two different colors on the canvas; one side of the canvas shows the use of gold thread and subtle colors while on the other side is showing bright colors of handwoven cloth, yarn and beads. With this painting being one of Abad’s greatest works on canvas, looking at the painting for a second time, this is revealing the meaning behind racism which is, surprising enough, the current problem within today’s society of racial problems and issues. It is creating a line between different skin tones.
After looking at these paintings a few times while writing this essay, there are many thoughts going through my head of what the situation is currently happening, especially racism. I remember reading them on multiple news articles and watching them on television. With the passing of black people, like George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, and black and white people confrontations, like Christian Cooper, many people are becoming racist while others are supporting them, despite their skin color. With George Floyd’s passing, especially, I knew it awakened many people to protest for the “Black Lives Matter” movement and cheering that everyone should be equal with one another, despite their skin color. I am a person with tanned skin and hearing about these problems and issues concerning the lives of many black people, I am full aware of how much pain and stress that they are all feeling, even if it’s just their skin tone.
From what I can see in Filipina: A Racial Identity Crisis and how it’s representing through art language, it is showing how certain people can see others because of their skin color. Whenever I see these issues happening, I would always have this one question stuck in my head: “Why are people not treating each other as equals?” Whoever we really are, different skin color; different race; different groups; or anything else, we are all children of God. It doesn’t matter of the colors of our skins and differences of our races, we are all human and we have our own rights in society, not to judged by others. And, like many, don’t see us, like myself, with open arms and being too close-minded with themselves, always judging others and seeing the actual thing of who they are.
Pacita Abad’s paintings may have been and exhibited in many, different museums and galleries around the world, she has travelled to more than 80 countries after briefly studying painting in Washington, DC, and New York. She uses her journeys and experiences while she’s living in Asia, Africa, and the Carribean, they are all part of a major impact on her artworks, and using personal experience to make her artworks more meaningful for people to understand why. No matter where we are going around the world, it’s better to understand what we learned from our experience, like different branches of different skills that we must learn and understand. I always wondered why I wanna know different skills sometimes, it’s because I want to learn and understand how that experience would be like if I would be learning that skill, or even getting myself curious of how different countries are like.
References:
Wikipedia Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacita_Abad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter
Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/pacita-abad-filipina-a-racial-identity-crisis
https://www.artsy.net/artist/pacita-abad
Filpina: A Racial Identity Crisis (Pinterest): https://www.pinterest.ph/pin/184647653452254302/?nic_v2=1a37Ircel
