Alfredo and Isabel AquilizanAlfredo Juan (born in Ballesteros, Cagayan Philippines in 1962) and Isab
Alfredo and Isabel AquilizanAlfredo Juan (born in Ballesteros, Cagayan Philippines in 1962) and Isabel Aquilizan y Gaudinez (born in Manila, Philippines in 1965) are currently based in Brisbane with their five children. The artist couple’s collaborative activities evolved within the spheres of family and community, including personal relationships and those they share with other artists. For years they have been exploring the meaning of ‘home’ and a sense of 'belonging’ while travelling extensively for work, finding and defining the notion of 'identity’, dealing with hardships of journey, displacement, sensing presences in absence and accumulating memory. They continue to process these issues through materials and objects that are both abstract and referential, objects that serve as metaphors of everyday human life. For the past ten years they have continuously collected fragments of their protracted Project Be-longing (1997-2007), an artistic collaboration spanning ten years. They are currently working on a new project entitled Another Country that talks about migration, dislocation, diaspora, adopting/adapting, settlement/resettlement, and identity. [text from http://www.acaw.info/?page_id=11295](5th image)Commonwealth: Project Another Country (2013), an interactive installation comprising tin crowns handmade from recycled oil cans. Viewers are encouraged to try on a crown and pose for a selfie in front of a mirror etched with the hashtag #everybodywantsacrown. This installation, along with others in the show, is indicative of the artists’ core concept, which is to encourage collective and individual dialogues that ultimately become the driving force behind their work. [text from http://www.sundaramtagore.com/exhibitions/alfredo-and-isabel-aquilizan/installations?view=slider] (6th image) The first of the site-specific installations was created in 2015 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, with a group of artists, blacksmiths and farmers. Symbolizing the complex social and political realities facing contemporary agrarian communities in Asia, immense, wing-like sculptures made from hand-forged sickles are hung and counter-balanced by sacks of rice, alongside photographs of farmers with video, sound and drawings. This project is now in the permanent collection of the Singapore Art Museum. A second version of the series was created in 2016 in Tabaco City, Philippines, a small village known for its knife-making industry and its profusion of leftist groups. This is an ongoing project with more wings slated for production in Cambodia, Vietnam and Taiwan. [text from http://www.sundaramtagore.com/exhibitions/alfredo-and-isabel-aquilizan/installations?view=slider] -- source link
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