Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan

Alfredo Juan Aquilizan (b. 1962, Cagayan Valley, Philippines, based in Los Baños, Philippines) and Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan (b. 1965, Manila, Philippines, based in Los Baños, Philippines) are a collaborative duo whose practice explores themes of displacement, memory, belonging and community. Using unassuming materials embedded with personal, cultural and symbolic meanings, they create mixed-media installations that reflect on the transitory nature of home and identity.

Processes of collection and co-creation feature prominently in the Aquilizans’ works. Often facilitating projects that centre on shared human experiences, they position art-making as a system grounded in communal interaction and involvement. In In-Habit: Project Another Country (2012–ongoing), the artists invite local communities to build cardboard houses that fill the exhibition space with an itinerant, ever-growing presence. The use of cardboard references the balikbayan box, or “repatriate box” that overseas Filipinos use to send items home, symbolising bittersweet expressions of love and longing. This is accompanied by a video work on the plight, resilience and creativity of the Badjao children, a marginalised seafaring ethnic group in the Philippines whose fragile stilt houses resemble the makeshift houses crafted by the audience.

Isabel Aquilizan obtained her Bachelor of Communication Arts from Assumption College in Makati City in 1986. Alfredo Aquilizan received his BFA from the Philippine Women’s University College of Music and Fine Arts in Manila in 1986 and his MFA from the Norwich School of Art and Design in 1996. Their works can be found in numerous collections including The Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai; Museum MACAN, Jakarta; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney; and Singapore Art Museum.

Notable solo exhibitions include Somewhere, Elsewhere, Nowhere (2023), Museum MACAN, Jakarta; That Space in Between (2022), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León; Articles of Faith (2021), Madre Museum, Naples; See Through (2021), Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; In-Habit (2021), Center for Art and Learning, Hässleholm; Pillars (2019), Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland; In-Habit (2016), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; and In-Habit (2014), Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide. The artists have also participated in major international festivals including Let’s Make a Better Place (2022), 4th Gallery Children’s Biennale, Singapore; SEA OF HEARTBREAK (2019), 5th Sea Art Festival, Busan; Restoration of the Sea (2019), 4th Setouchi Triennale, Kagawa; Re:emerge (2013), 11th Sharjah Biennial; Touched (2010), 9th Liverpool Biennial; APT6 (2009), 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; Wonder (2008), 2nd Singapore Biennale; 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006); A Grain of Dust, A Drop of Water (2004), 5th Gwangju Biennale; and Dreams and Conflicts (2003), 50th Venice Biennale.

The Aquilizans had their residency at the STPI Workshop in 2016, resulting in the exhibition Of Fragments and Impressions (2017).