Pio Abad, Frances Wadsworth Jones

The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders 2019 is a sculptural installation presented as a long vitrine showcasing fifteen objects rendered in white 3D-printed plastic. Each object takes the form of an item of ornate fine jewellery, such as a necklace a tiara or a brooch, and is presented on a brass stand according to the display convention of decorative arts museums. Beneath each object is a brief printed description of the item and, in a subversion of traditional museum practices, the equivalent value of the jewellery in public goods and services. For example, in the first two descriptions, ‘A Belle Epoque diamond and platinum tiara, by Cartier’ is equated to ‘The treatment of 12,052 cases of tuberculosis until their full recovery’ and ‘An antique Ceylon sapphire and diamond necklace, by Van Cleef & Arpels’ is equated to ' Electricity to approximately 2,252 households in off-grid area’.

The work is accompanied by interpretive texts situated in the gallery, explaining that the objects are replicas of lots in the ‘Hawaii Collection’, a 2016 cancelled auction sale of jewellery that had been seized by United States customs from the deposed leaders of the Philippines, Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, when they landed in Honolulu, after being granted exile in 1986 by then US President Ronald Reagan. The subject is of particular interest to Abad, whose immediate family were prominent critics of the Marcos dictatorship, to the degree that both of his parents were incarcerated under that regime.

The work comments on power, corruption and the ownership of material objects. Jane Ryan and William Saunders were the pseudonyms adopted by Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in 1968 to set up a Swiss bank account that notoriously became a depository for funds diverted from the Philippine treasury for their private benefit. In Abad and Wadsworth Jones’s ‘collection’, ‘the jewels exist not as luxurious accessories but as a spectral line-up that hovers between evidence and effigy, carrying with it the painful history of a nation’ (artists’ statement, correspondence with Tate curators Clara Kim and Katy Wan, June 2020).

The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders is a collaborative work between Pio Abad and his wife, the jewellery designer Frances Wadsworth Jones, whose involvement reveals the technical knowledge and skill required to reconstruct the ‘Hawaii Collection’, for which the artists were only able to access documentary photographs from the cancelled Christie’s auction sale. The work exists in an edition of two with one artists’ proof; Tate’s is the artists’ proof. It was exhibited at Art Jameel in Dubai in 2019–20.

This work forms part of a long-term artistic project started by Pio Abad in 2012 on the significance of certain artefacts in the recent history of the Philippines, with particular attention given to the cultural legacy of the Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos regime. Curator Natasha Ginwala has described Abad’s historical investigations as ‘revealing large consequences of … loot as an unauthenticated history, eerily echoing feudal patterns and the generational spread of oligarchic power in the present day.’ (Natasha Ginwala, ‘Corruption: Three Bodies, and Ungovernable Subjects’, e-flux journal, no.67, November 2015, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/67/60724/corruption-three-bodies-and-ungovernable-subjects/, accessed 12 August 2020.)

Further reading
‘Artist talk: Pio Abad on The Collection of Jane Ryan & William Saunders’, video, Art Jameel, Dubai, 2019, YouTube, https://youtu.be/mhBckwGCE7I, accessed 18 November 2020.
Pio Abad and Izabella Scott, ‘Pio Abad – interview: “The backbone of my practice is family: personal and political narratives entwined”’, Studio International, 1 August 2020, https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/pio-abad-interview-the-collection-of-jane-ryan-william-saunders-ferdinand-imelda-marcos-phillilpines, accessed 18 November 2020.

Katy Wan
August 2020