Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan

            Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan are life and art partners. The pair's collaborative approach is characterized by a spirit of co-creation and collaboration, with interactive acts frequently included in their large-scale multimedia assemblages centered on themes of family, migration, displacement, and memory.

            Alfredo Juan and Isabel Aquilizan y Guadinez were born in Cagayan Valley and Manila respectively.  Their works are often large cardboard box installations or personal artefacts that relate to the transience of human endeavor and place-making. Their nomadic works explore the realities of making do and parenting, as well as the shattered social identities that come from human displacement, and were formed through years of working overseas.

            The couple moved to Brisbane with their five children in 2006 in search of a better life. As a result, the Aquilizans' trip became a symbol for all migrant families' relocation. Project Be-Longing (1997–present) is an outstanding open-ended work that takes the shape of balikbayan boxes filled with personal apparel, books, and belongings that are used to convey products by the Filipino diaspora.

            In-Habit: Project Another Country (2012), which was inspired by the difficult lifestyles of the minority Badjao people, requested local Australian communities to donate improvised cardboard dwellings to a small community. Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan's focus in community-building, interdependence, and connectedness is reflected in the seafaring Badjao, who dwell in precarious stilt huts across the Sulu Archipelago and reject conceptions of citizenry, sovereign nations, and capitalist economies. In-inverted Habit's mountains, suggestive of favelas or Badjao Torosiaje, contribute to the displaced's vernacular, tying viewers together in the act of meaning-making. 'The tensions and joys of a life that is continuously changing drive and sustain us, converting our artwork into a quasi-celebration of daily life,' the two explain.

            The artist couple's joint endeavors grew out of their personal and professional relationships, as well as those they share with other artists. They've spent years searching for and defining the concept of 'home' and a sense of 'belonging' while traveling frequently for business, coping with the challenges of trip, displacement, experiencing presences in absence, and gathering memory. They continue to handle these difficulties through abstract and referential materials and things, which serve as metaphors for ordinary human existence.

            The majority of their works employ design hybridity as an aspect and concept. The artist employs hybridity in their work by combining conventional mediums with new or uncommon materials, such as rubber sandals in "Last Flight" (2009). The use of recycled materials in artwork has a significant impact on the meaning of the piece.


Last Flight (2009)

Address 1 (2004)


Vessel (2016)


Passage Project Another Country (2016)



In-habit Gradation (2016)


LADE: Project Another Country, in Naka-Boso International Art Festival Ichihara Art x Mix 2014



Reference: 

https://ocula.com/artists/alfredo-and-isabel-aquilizan/

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