The husband-and-wife team of Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan create works that use the processes of collecting and collaborating to express ideas of migration, family and memory. Often working with local communities, the Aquilizans bring together personal items to compose elaborate, formal installations reflecting individual experiences of dislocation and change.
Recent works have used the form of balikbayan crates, which Filipino migrants use to transport belongings, as moulds for room-sized constructions made of clothing and other personal effects. Having migrated from The Philippines to Australia, the Aquilizans’ work reflects personal experience, while conveying points of exchange and communication that extend beyond borders.
As Australian representative artists in this year’s 6th Asia Pacific Triennial, the Aquilizan’s worked with donated recycled materials to produce In-Flight (Project: Another Country) an assemblage of hand crafted airplanes which increases in size and diversity as visitors to the gallery are encourages to produce their own aircraft thereby adding to the ‘work’.
Image : Alfredo + Isabel Aquilizan, Be-Longing: In Transit (2007), personal affects, boxes, Sampaguita scent (Jasmine).
For more information please visit –Â Jan Manton Art
