Filipino-born artists Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan are inspired by an ethos of co-creation and collective spirit. Often inviting participatory actions into their large-scale multimedia assemblages, the artist duo explores ideas of family, migration, displacement, and memory.
Read MoreThe Aquilizan's work usually comprises sprawling cardboard box installations or personal artefacts that speak to the transience of human endeavour and place-making. Their itinerant works, developed over years of working abroad, address the practicalities of making do and parenting, as well as the fractured social identities that result from human resettlement.
The Aquilizans' art delves into:
In 2006 the couple migrated with their five children to Brisbane, where they would live until 2024. In doing so, the Aquilizans' journey became a metaphor for the displacement of all migrant families. 'Project Be-Longing' (1997–present) is an exemplary open-ended work taking the form of balikbayan boxes arranged with personal clothing, books and possessions that are used by the Filipino diaspora to transport goods.
In the cargo-ready balikbayan boxes of 'Project Be-Longing', personal histories undergo radical compartmentalisation and detachment. Project Be-Longing: In Transit (2006) presented the artists' family's own belongings unmoored during their move from the Philippines to Australia, embodying the emotional and spiritual longing for home that connects individuals to their roots.
Inspired by the precarious livelihoods of the minority Badjao people, In-Habit: Project Another Country (2012) asked local Australian communities to contribute makeshift cardboard houses to a miniature village. The seafaring Badjao, who live across the Sulu Archipelago in fragile stilt houses and whose lifestyle rejects notions of citizenry, sovereign states, and capitalist economies, reflects Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan's interest in community-building, interdependence, and connectivity.
The resultant topography of In-Habit, with its inverted mountains reminiscent of favelas or Badjao Torosiaje, share in the vernacular of the displaced, binding viewers together in the process of meaning-making.
A participatory project inviting visitors to create cardboard boats, emphasising community collaboration.
Their first major public art commission, the six-metre bronze sculpture Bound (2024) depicts a vessel made from 85 pieces of luggage tied with rope. Bound, permanently installed at Sirius Sydney in The Rocks, symbolises the history and universal narratives of the historic neighbourhood.
Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan frequently invite local communities to contribute to their installations, fostering collective creativity and shared narratives.
In March 2025, the artists called upon visitors to Bundanon Art Museum to add their own cardboard sculptures and drawings to the installation Reflections/Habitations (2025). Part of the museum's group exhibition Thinking Together: Exchanges with the Natural World, the project continues the Aquilizan's ongoing engagement with ideas of home and family.
Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan has held solo exhibitions at numerous institutions, including:
Their group exhibitions include:
Their works have also been displayed in museums across Japan, Australia, and other countries.
Ocula | 2025
