Abad’s practice looks at political narratives of empire and impunity, not as isolated accounts, but as intertwined histories, implicating a wide-ranging cast of transnational and transhistorical characters, re-constructing stories that are at once geopolitical and allegorical, and speaking to both painful intimate histories and imminent collective futures.

In this sharing session, Abad will present his recent project and ongoing research methodology involving primarily museum archives and auction catalogues. This specific project reflects on the miscalculated concept of “end of history” and examines informal relationships, even friendships, between authoritarian states during and after the Cold War, in order to create a cartography of neoliberal fantasy.