Patricia Perez Eustaquio's 'Emporium' explores how materials—textiles, fibres, ceramics—can be leveraged to explore histories of colonialism and exchange in the Philippines. Crossing the gallery space is a monumental, braided-rope sculpture woven from Manila hemp, a plant native to the Philippines that became a colonial-era commodity used to make shipping ropes (Fountain, 2024). Its interlocking design is adapted from pre-colonial Filipino gold jewellery, bringing in another lost practice.

Every work in ‘Soft Fantasy/Hard Reality’ strives to disclose its own ideals, disruptions, and experiments. The titular opposition can be read as a shift away from – a refusal of – the Western art world’s tendency to group work by Asian or Asian-diasporic artists into a flattening, identity-based framework. This show’s anti-essentialist approach not only supports artistic expression without imposing predetermined cultural and racial interpretations, but also, perhaps more surprisingly, offers a chance at affinities outside of the basis of identity.

Always traveling with a sketchbook in hand, Abad recorded the migrant experience in different parts of the world, showing the universality of the collective trauma of displacement and extending it to a commentary on the condition of exile, identity loss and assimilation rapidly spreading worldwide. The show successfully highlights Abad’s unconditional openness to other cultures, listening and emphasizing humanity in all its variety while portraying both the positive and negative aspects of globalism in her work.