Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan1962-, 1965-

Alfredo Juan and Isabel Aquilizan work together as a couple, parents and artists. Though they pursue individual creative vocations, their collaborations dwell on their everyday life within a family of five children. The duty of raising them and the intimacy of ensuring their well-being have come to inflect their work with collective habits, or habits of collection - and also of belonging. In the Philippine setting, where filial ties are extensive, the Aquilizan brood cannot be solitary; it is but part of a community of kin that weaves in and out of the household. Through the years, the home as an abode gathers testimonies of passage: of clothes and toys outgrown, furniture stacked in storage, and other possessions strewn along paths.

- Their work heavily draws on memory of home and country. This memory is viewed as a process of recollection, of remembering details and artifacts of a living history of people, places, and encounters. In undertaking this kind of artistic process, they collaborate with communities and forges connections among its people. In gathering domestic items, mementoes, everyday objects, things used and discarded, they restore the ecology of art as a system of interaction, mutual critique of differences, and the possibilities of the convergence of communities

-Many of Alfredo and Isabel's projects demonstrate this instinct of collecting as well as the techniques of exposition. They have stayed overnight in a museum and marked its precinct with traces of their residence. They have sought out mementoes from relatives in Australia; shoes, toothbrushes and garbage in Japan; blankets and dreams in Korea; and identification photographs of youth and domestic items in the Philippines. But as home is not singular, so is it not sedentary. Its members wander off and return.

- The practice of Alfredo/Isabel Aquilizan indexes the habit of keeping and investing things with sentiment. It is a disposition shaped by varying desires: as a matter of necessity for a family of five children and as a matter of contingency for artists seeking the intimate contexts of a collective, whether kin or nation, the mass or the global. It is further deepened by their experience as Filipino migrants in Australia and their commissions of installations across the world.

Alfredo Juan Aquilizan is an artist of broad sympathies. He draws, paints, sculpts, mixes media, does assemblages, and initiates installation projects. He earned his fine arts degree from the Philippine Women's University in 1986 and his master's from the Polytechnic University in Norwich, England. He is currently pursuing his doctorate at the Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. Together with wife Isabel, he has exhibited at biennales/triennials like Venice, Sydney, and Singapore and has been commissioned by the Tate Liverpool. He taught at the Philippine High School for the Arts, University of the Philippines at Los Baños and at the Queensland College of Arts, Brisbane Australia.

Isabel Aquilizan is a teacher and artist of the performing arts. She is a director and actress. Her engagement with the process of performance and its inherent collaborative possibilities has led her to work with her husband in installations that cross gaps between media and distances. Her role as a mother of five children enables her to intervene in recreating the art of installation as home or habitat that is sustained by housekeeping, child rearing, nurturing, and the collecting of memories. She completed her degree in Communication Arts major in Production at the Assumption College in 1986 and taught at the Philippine High School for the Arts.

At present both artists work with their five children Miguel, Diego, Amihan, Leon and Aniway under the family collective The Fruitjuice Factori Studio.

Biography

Alfredo Juan
1962 born in Cagayan Valley, Philippines
Maria Isabel
1965 born in Maniｌa, Philippines
Both lives and works in Australia.

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Solo Exhibitions

2023 Major Survey Exhibition: Somewhere, Elsewhere, Nowhere, Museum Macan / Jakarta, Indonesia
2022 That Space in Between: Project Another Country, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC)
2021 Project Another Country : “Island” AFTER FAIRWEATHER Exhibition, Caboolture Regional Art Gallery / Moreton Bay Regional Council, QLD, Australia
2021 Articles of Faith : Project Another Country Rethinking Nature / Madre Museum, Naples, Italy
2021 See Through: Project Another Country Making Art Work, Institute of Modern Art / Brisbane, QLD, Australia
2021 In Habit : Project Another Country Center for Art and Learning /
Hässleholmsvägen, Vanås, Sweden
2019 Home / Return 2019, Art Front Gallery / Tokyo, Japan
2019 Pillars: Project Another Country Auckland Art Gallery / New Zealand
2018 of Fragments and Impressions STPI / Singapore
2014 Habitations: Another Country Art Front Gallery / Tokyo
2014 In Habitat: Project Another Country Samstag Art Museum / Adelaide, Australia
2013 In Habitat: Project Another Country 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa / Japan
2012 In Habitat: Project Another Country Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney / Australia

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Group Exhibitions

2023 Connectivity Construction / Asia Culture Center（ACC）, Korea
2023 Luo Shan Feng Art Festival in Taiwan / 2023落山風藝術季 / Seaside Gallery, Taiwan
2023 Yet, with Love, Address: Project Another Country / PODO Museum / Jeju Island, South Korea
2023 THE NATIONAL 4 : Australia Now: Cohesive Narrative / Campbelltown Art Center / NSW, Australia
2022 Sea Lane: The Collection Show 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa / Japan
2022 HEAD|HOME : Project Another Country, Children’s Biennale / National Gallery Singapore / Singapore
2019 Tales From the Wind, Litanies of the Sea Sea Art Festival : Busan Biennale Busan, South Korea
2019 Art Action & Ecology in Asia RMIT University / Melbourne, Australia
2017 Japan Alps Art Festival Water Fields: Project Another Country / Nagano
2016 Setouchi International Art Festival, Ibuki island / Kagawa, Japan
2015 An Art Exhibition for Children Whose place is this? Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo / Tokyo
2015 Who interprets the world? 21 Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa / Ishikawa
2014 ICHIHARA ART x MIX Ichihara Lakeside Museum / Chiba
2013 Sharjah Biennial 11 / United Arab Emirates
2013 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art / Russia
2012 Drawing Room Galllery / Gillman Barracks, Singapore
2011 Singapore Art Museum / Singapore
2010 Liverpool Biennial / United Kingom
2009 6th Asia Triennale of Contemporary Art / Australia
2009 Dojima Biennale / Osaka
2008 2nd Singapore Biennale / Singapore
2007 Biennale of Sydney / Australia Filipiniana / Madrid, Spain
2006 3rd Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale / Niigata
2005 Ten Days on the Island, HWY 1 Project / Australia
2004 Gwangju Biennale / Korea BIWAKO Biennale / Shiga
2003 Venice Biennale / Italy
1999 3rd Asia Triennale of Contemporary Art / Australia 1st Asian Art Triennale / Fukuoka

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Collection / Public Art

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa / Japan

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