Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan’s relationship as husband and wife extend to their artistic collaboration. Having raised their family in Australia and still maintaining ties to the Philippines, Alfredo and Isabel draw out their experiences of the tenuous interface of migration and diaspora in their projects. Their practice are recognized and valued within these two places and beyond the continents that define their interest, having been featured in biennales across the globe – 1^st, 3^rd and 6^th Asia Pacific Triennale, Biennal dela Havana (1999 and 1997), Gwangju and Busan Biennale and the La Biennale de Venecia to name a handful.

The oeuvre of Alfredo and Isabel are largely sculptural and installative, and sometimes includes a participatory dimension that include a community’s involvement in the acquisition of things that make up their works. The objects and other forms of fragments that are put together contain evidence of gesture and touch – a history contained in each and every bit assembled into an abstracted whole. Project Be-longing grounds the performative aspect of their community-oriented works, moving among locales in their travels from 1997-2007, expanding the acting field of their projects in the collaboration of certain groups.

While particular experiences are often invoked in discussions of their work, their pieces invite socio-cultural readings in the transactions that make up the life of immigrants. Elements from the places they are rooted in emerge continuously – such as the form of balikbayan boxes, jeepney parts and even the scent of sampaguita­ – and these collected goods which are configured bring vividly to life memories of events that led to Alfredo and Isabel’s investigation of displacement and orientation, the elusive regulations of identity and the capacity to keep ‘home’. As much as their sculptures contain autobiographical context, the resilience and charisma of their forms allow for a hermeneutic extent.