Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan and Alfredo Juan Aquilizan

Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan and Alfredo Juan Aquilizan, Passage (Project Another Country), 2010. Photograph by Thierry Bal 

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The work of Filipino artists Isabel (b.1965, Philippines) and Alfredo Aquilizan (b.1962, Philippines) addresses individuals and their personal stories, histories and belongings, as well as their creativity and dreams. Their practice is collaborative in method, making use of the accumulation and rearrangement of physical objects and narratives. 

Often existing communities and an institutional ‘public’ are invited to engage together in the production of the artwork. In this way, the artists create communal experiences initiated by collecting domestic items, such as blankets, clothing and toiletries, displaced and transformed by meticulous reorganisation. In this way, their projects build, accumulate and dissect collective memories – and hopes for the future.

For their Touched commission, Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan explored what is specific to a particular place and the inter-connectivity of experiences between peoples and communities around the world. As a departure point, they considered how the life and history of people in Australia – where they have been based since 2006 – related to the realities and experiences of people in Liverpool. How might the sea – as a physical and metaphorical threshold on whichever side of the globe – inform our thinking and longing for a different and better life? How and to where do we project our dreams and longings?

In the run-up and also throughout Touched, communities and families in Liverpool built small boats out of recycled ‘removals’ boxes, contributing their own communities of boat-shelters to the gallery installation. Presented together, the objects connote real or imagined journeys; they offer a reflection on forced or voluntary migration, as well as a meditation on the impossibility of escaping our own identity and place of origin.

Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan and Alfredo Juan Aquilizan at Liverpool Biennial 2010 

Passage (Project Another Country), 2010.
Mixed-media installation with participatory elements
Commissioned by and exhibited at Tate Liverpool