Preface Gene Sherman
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Tallstoria Felicity Fenner
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In-Habit: Project Another Country Colour Plates
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Artists’ Selected Biography
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Artists’ Selected Bibliography
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Contributors
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Acknowledgements
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Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Sydney 22 June – 25 August 2012
Pages 2–79 In-Habit: Project Another Country, 2012 Location photographs, Badjao Community Seaside II, Barangay, Matina Aplaya, Davao City, Philippines Photos: Alfredo Juan Aquilizan
Inside front cover and page 1 Bacuit Bay, Palawan, Philippines Photo: Adeh DeSandies
An Interview with Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan Dolla S. Merrillees
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan In-Habit: Project Another Country
Contents
Preface Dr Gene Sherman AM Chairman and Executive Director Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
In-Habit: Project Another Country, by Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan, continues Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation’s (SCAF’s) commitment to the art, culture and history of Southeast Asia. The conversation about this project began, as do a number of Australia-based contemporary Asian art interchanges, at an Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) in Brisbane. At APT6 in 2009, In–flight (Project: Another Country) – a mountainous accumulation of several thousand aircraft constructed from found objects and materials such as paper, cardboard, ice block sticks, string and wool – formed part of a school-based, state-wide project initiated and artistically guided by the Aquilizans. A super-sized circular table circumscribed by a shallow trough – a container for the above-mentioned Arte Poverainspired building blocks – allowed a multigenerational public, perched comfortably on purpose-built stools, to continuously add to the rising heap and hanging group of individually crafted planes. The work spoke symbolically to the themes of migration, transplantation, re-integration and the disposal of waste. The Zeitgeist was subtly evoked: legal and illegal population flows, backward and forward people movement, and a constant crisscrossing of the globe, whether in person, by courier or in our imagination. I stopped dead in my tracks. Amidst the bustle of creative children, engrossed parents and engaged adults, I knew I had found the beginnings of a SCAF installation. Shortly after my encounter with this extraordinary installation we decided to embark on a project specifically oriented towards primary school children. Why not, in the first instance, explore commissioned works created during the decade of highly successful children’s projects at Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art? The gallery’s Children’s Art Centre is, I believe, unrivalled worldwide and has acquired many of the works originally commissioned for its enthusiastic audiences. The research that followed led me – and our team – into hitherto unchartered waters. We connected with Lea Mais, a PhD researcher investigating the impact of museum visits on our youngest demographic (four- to six-year-olds), and selected five
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(out of no less than seventy) of the Queensland Art Gallery’s commissions for children to be adapted for SCAF’s 2010 interactive exhibition Contemporary Art for Contemporary Kids. While all five artworks caught the attention of thousands of young visitors to the show, the working materials for In-flight had to be constantly replaced – gallery staff barely kept pace with the needs of the youngsters and accompanying adults intent on adding to the growing collection of audience-made planes. Over the years, each project by Alfredo and Isabel has convinced me of the importance of this highly intelligent, deeply empathetic husband and wife team. Their medium is invariably refuse – unwanted, discarded waste material; their vision transcendent. Symbolic associations in their work derive from channels deeply etched into the consciousness of a thinking, compassionate humanity. The formal structures present as visually compelling, almost monolithic, installations. However, their component parts, although artist directed, are community created. The 2003 Venice Biennale featured Project M201: In God We Trust – for me, Alfredo and Isabel’s most internationally accessible project. The jeepney, a World War II jeep reconfigured with make-do parts, lies at the heart of this significant project. Used in their thousands to transport, for a few pesos, Filipino workers, their livestock and their produce across and among crowded streets and many islands, jeepneys signal the poverty, resilience and can-do spirit of a nation struggling to keep up with itself and the world at large. The Aquilizans’ vehicle resembles, but does not duplicate, the iconic original. Created from gleaming stainless steel remnants, and loaded with household objects symbolic of burdensome and hopeful daily lives (cut up Bibles among them), the contraption undertook thirty-two long days of journeying from Manila to Venice. From coast to coast, laden with historical, cultural and community legacies, In God We Trust travelled over 10,000 kilometres by sea and then another 1000 kilometres from the port of Genoa to its final destination. The whole journey roughly equated to distances that might be covered in three months of ferrying passengers to and fro through the streets and spaces of the country that birthed its mongrel form. Flight, an installation comprising over 4000 used thongs – collected from a Singaporean correctional facility, speared onto flagpoles and hoisted, leaning away from the viewer, many metres into the air – attracted my attention and the attention of many visitors to the 2008 Singapore Biennale. The artists’ earlier commitment to distilling and
Opposite In-flight (Project: Another Country) Various recycled materials, and sound files Installation view, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, 2010 First commissioned by the Queensland Art Gallery for The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, 2009 Supported by the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation Photo: Simm Steel
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evoking global issues – poverty, marginalisation, illegal status – as well as their commitment to active community involvement, reinforced my initial interest and provoked further deliberation and delving. I have never visited the Philippines, although Brian, my husband, and I have had a longstanding arm’s length connection with the country via a Manila-based family whose acquaintance we made when the matriarch came to work as a part-time housekeeper for us in Sydney. We garnered at first hand, and through piecemeal revelations, searing insights into her struggles to raise and educate four children. The oldest son, whose studies we sponsored, is now a qualified nurse and keeps in regular contact, and through personal interaction with his and his younger brother’s educational institutions we have come to glimpse something of the vast god-fearing, Englishproficient, deeply aspirational but largely powerless, poverty-stricken community that makes up the bulk of this complex nation. Another connection was made through a work I saw in Tel Aviv some four years ago, which has stuck firmly in my psyche. Filipino maids were photographed facing the camera directly and the images presented in rows. Smiling gingerly, heads held high, their cheerful expressions blatantly contradicted the wall texts documenting their plight: 24/7 working weeks, no holidays, cubbyhole accommodation, inadequate wages, abusive treatment, total lack of privacy and, astonishingly, employment prospects determined in part by their height. This last information ‘bite’ felt like a sick punchline: they could never expect to find a position should the mistress or master of the house be smaller in stature than they. Slavery was ‘abolished’ in the mid-nineteenth century but, as we know and prefer to ignore, slavery in the form of trafficking and child prostitution lives on. The lives of the Filipino women in this artwork bear testimony to the need for international measures to erase practices that debase the global community. Fast forward to the present. SCAF, the Sherman family and our wonderful Foundation staff feel deeply honoured to commission and present In-Habit: Project Another Country, a two-part installation work by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan. In-Habit’s pre-production took place during the course of the month leading up to the exhibition opening in June 2012. Schools in the neighbourhood, and beyond, allocated time to artist-led workshops. During the course of the exhibition, children and other members of the community will serve as active participants in
the production of the physical work and contribute to the cumulative meaning of the artists’ multilayered, multidimensional project. Alfredo and Isabel, like many of today’s significant artists, are serious creative researchers. They started work on what was to become the SCAF project in 2008. Currently based in Brisbane with their fabulous family of five children, they returned to their homeland in order to explore the idea of working with, and bearing witness artistically to, the millions of urban poor. With ninety-four million people, over 7000 islands, a mixed-bag colonial history, power and wealth in the hands of a fraction of the population and seven million people living under official poverty lines, their research found resonance wherever they looked. The home of the ‘make-do’, ‘the lean-to’, the ‘get by as you can’, opened up to them, unfolding and revealing hitherto only partly revealed secrets. Social injustices are oftentimes uncovered and revealed via government agencies, judicial inquiries and documentary films and brought to public notice through a host of didactic educational and formal strategies. Art relies on poetry, on the imaginative realm, and the visual arts need, I believe, visual impact and compelling aesthetic focus. When we stand before or within the Aquilizans’ towering slum dwellings, recycled cardboard boxes precariously constructed on, across and around industrial scaffolding by people we know or imagine, we are faced with a highly poeticised visualisation of imagined personal stories. When, in the video work, we listen to and watch the global/local rap chanting of marginalised Badjao children whose parents are no longer able to roam the seas as fisher folk at large, we know that despite intense deprivation, the human spirit somehow strives to live on. Thank you to our fabulous four-part SCAF children’s programme sponsor, the Nelson Meers Foundation, and to the organisation’s much-loved, inspirational director, Sam Meers. Thanks to Brian Sherman for his love and support. He too is an inspiration to so many people. He senses the world as an artist does, and at some level he is one. Certainly, his bedrock underpinning of SCAF remains an example to others. There is so much to do and so many worthwhile endeavours – Alfredo and Isabel are amongst those leading the way.
Overleaf Last Thing: Project Belonging, 2006 Artworks, artist materials, deconstructed artist studio, metal transport palette Installation view, Stock, Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines Collection: National Museum of the Philippines Photo: Ocs Alvarez
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Tallstoria Felicity Fenner Acting Director, College of Fine Arts Galleries and Chief Curator, National Institute for Experimental Arts, University of New South Wales
The word ‘home’ originates from the French hanter, which has its origin in the Germanic word haunt. Expatriate Australian author Geraldine Brooks offers various definitions of ‘home’: as a place of origin or starting point; a goal or destination; an environment offering security and happiness.1 Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan’s art practice encompasses all these definitions of home, which for them is a concept that underpins, motivates and provides the setting for each of their ambitious art endeavours. Always in flux, one project evolves into the next, adapting to new contexts as it shifts between countries. Twenty-first century citizens of the world, the Aquilizans are global, interdisciplinary artists who tell true stories and tall about home and its antithesis – displacement. Like Brooks, they breathe the air of one country while haunted by the psyche of another. Concepts of home and the experience of displacement have particularly preoccupied the Filipino-born couple’s practice over the last five years, a period of significant change for the Aquilizans. The family moved to Brisbane from their home near Manila in late 2006. In addition to the uprooting and resettlement of five children, they have had to invent strategies to re-orient, in the context of a foreign culture and language, a professional practice that is grounded in the familiar actions and the accoutrements of everyday life. In addition, they often incorporate a collaborative approach to their art-making, which depends for its success on establishing common ground with diverse communities. In art and life, the search for ‘home’ is driven, sometimes unconsciously, by the search for a kind of utopia. Derived from the Greek words ou and topos, ‘utopia’ literally translates as ‘no place’. In English, conversely, it means ‘good place’. Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan share the Renaissance English writer Thomas More’s dichotomous understanding of ‘home’ as an idealistic construct that is ultimately unobtainable. They celebrate, however, the value of adaptability and resilience to survival. Their optimism and creativity, their willingness to make do with what is at hand, is an approach and aesthetic embraced throughout the artists’ oeuvre. Like many artists who have first-hand experience of shifting between cultures, the Aquilizans create work that is informed by the struggle of displacement, but also
1. Geraldine Brooks, The Idea of Home: Boyer Lectures 2011, HarperCollins Publishers, Sydney, Australia, 2011.
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advantaged by the bird’s-eye view afforded by seeing one’s place of origin from the distant perspective of another place. The current iteration of their Another Country series, InHabit, explores the culture of the Badjao people through the lens of the artists’ own diasporic psyche. The Badjao live on the edge, in every sense, of southern Mindanao, the easternmost island of the Philippines. Traditionally fishermen and pearl divers who lived nomadically at sea, the Badjao are now one of the world’s most marginalised ethnic groups, inhabiting makeshift houseboats and stilt houses on coastal settlements along the Sulu Archipelago. In-Habit comprises two intertwined stories of displacement and resilience. The first refers to the Badjao’s precarious stilt settlements that evolve and expand in response to the vagaries and vicissitudes of life on the edge. In the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) gallery space, a cacophony of mismatched removal boxes becomes an improvised shanty town, supported by steel scaffolding that stretches from floor to ceiling. The cardboard condominiums proliferate as local children and other visitors create further elements and contribute to the dwellings over the course of the exhibition. The other component of In-Habit is a three-channel video installation, the artists’ first major foray into film.2 It explores the severely underprivileged but quick-witted Badjao children, who, trapped by circumstance in a life of limbo, have learnt to increase their takings as beggars by infusing foreign rap music with local dialect. They perform their spontaneous routines on the streets of Filipino cities, revealing uncanny humour and ingenuity.3 Though outwardly diverse, the two stories that comprise this edition of Another Country reference the Badjao and via their lived experience focus on themes of displacement and temporality, adaptation and resilience. While it is easy to see these works simply as a reflection on transient populations, the Aquilizans’ stories of migratory experience are multilayered. On one level, each project is a narrative about moving from or living in the Philippines. On another, we are presented with a very site-specific work that responds to the geocultural factors, and to a less important degree the physical site, of the place in which the work is being created and exhibited. Another layer of intent is the audience’s interaction with the project, both at the preparatory and exhibition stages. The artists conceive of each work as a journey; a journey of trial and error, exploration and understanding, of imparting knowledge and insight. In sharing their stories and those of the dispossessed, the artists encourage visitors to the exhibition to engage in, create and exhibit their ‘dream home’.
2. It is their second film. They included a video component in the stainless steel jeep, Project M201: In God We Trust, in Hou Hanru’s Zone of Urgency at the 2003 Venice Biennale. 3. View a performance at <www.youtube.com/wat ch?v=CHkcxD69H3g&fe ature=related>. Opposite Presences and Absences: Project Belonging, 1999 Used toothbrushes, vitrine Private collection Photo: Ocs Alvarez
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Worldwide, more than 200 million people are currently seeking better working and living conditions as migrants. Over a quarter of this transitory population is in the AsiaPacific region. Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan joined over eight million other Filipinos living abroad, away from a home in which 70 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. Having settled elsewhere, they began travelling back to the Philippines in 2008, seeking to re-engage with the country they had left behind by researching and interacting with poor and disadvantaged communities. It is impossible, and perhaps counterproductive, to separate the Aquilizans’ personal lives from their art practice. The extent to which the two are intertwined is revealed in the following story: During a visit to the Philippines in 2005, the artistic director of the 2006 Biennale of Sydney, Charles Merewether, invited the artists to participate in the Biennale. At the time, the family was considering the possibility of emigrating to Australia, primarily in order to provide their five school-aged children with the opportunity for a better chance in life than that offered by the daily struggle and discontent they faced in the Philippines. The artists saw the Biennale’s invitation as an expedient route to an Australian life and promptly devised a work for Sydney that was seamlessly integrated into their migration plans. Each of the children was issued with a packing box, known in Filipino culture as a balikbayan box, and instructed to fill it with all that they needed for a new life in Australia. In order to maximise the capacity of each box, items needed to be carefully selected, folded and ordered. Each person’s box became a kind of self-portrait, exhibited in the 2006 Biennale of Sydney under the title InTransit, the final work of the artists’ Be-longing series that anticipated the move. Later that year, with the support of a letter from the Biennale attesting to their standing in the international art world, the family settled in Brisbane. Upon relocating to Australia, the artists commenced their next project, Another Country, to which the current work belongs. The first work in this new series, Address, expanded and extended the dozen ‘building blocks’ from Be-longing: In-Transit to create a house-like installation. Created for the 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Address also has as its raison d’etre an amusing story of deft opportunism, the next chapter in the family’s migration story of art and life. Having edited their worldly goods down to the handful of packing boxes that had been ‘sent ahead’ courtesy of the Sydney Biennale, upon arriving in Brisbane the artists were inundated with offers of assistance from the local Filipino community. Clothes, kitchen appliances, books, toys and crockery arrived at their new home during
the first days and weeks. Being as kind-hearted as their benevolent compatriots, the artists found themselves unable to politely reject the well-intended gifts, so began packing them methodically into removal boxes to match the original few. The result was a ‘house’ created from 140 balikbayan boxes filled with household items. Entering the comforting confines of the ‘house’ one could feel the warmth and reassurance of familiar, loved objects. But the walls were constructed from memories in place of mortar and there was no roof. Ultimately, the ‘home’ was vulnerable, open to the vicissitudes and uncertainties of a foreign and unpredictable environment. One of the key works in the 2008 Adelaide Biennial, the structure itself soon became itinerant – a transient Address of no fixed address. It was shipped from Adelaide to Sydney for an exhibition about global migration and shown in the context of, among other works, Ou Ning’s poignant film about the eradication of hutong (ancient alleyway) habitats in Beijing.4 Within months Address was on the road again, to the 2008 Singapore Biennale then major exhibitions in Linz, Osaka, Jerusalem and the Philippines; its movement around the world an unplanned metaphor for the challenges faced by many itinerant peoples in search of a permanent home, a ‘utopia’. Joseph Beuys famously declared that everyone is an artist, an idea premised on individuals recognising the potential for everyday actions to be considered art. Despite their energetic mobilisation of non-artist participants in the creation of many of their projects, for Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan the connection between art and everyday life is slightly different. Rather than seeing quotidian actions as a form of art, they are inspired by ordinary circumstances to instigate activities, often communal, that activate everyday people and resources. In its strategic deployment of inexpensive and impermanent materials, together with its community-based, performative construction methodologies, the Aquilizans’ approach shares certain modus operandi with Arte Povera. Of another generation and in another hemisphere, we are reminded, for example, of Mario Merz igloos. Merz’s igloo constructions, recreated in different contexts around the world, paid homage to Indigenous nomadic societies, who, like the Aquilizans, Merz admired for their adaptability and resilience to harsh living environments. In-Habit continues the use of the cardboard packing boxes that are the symbolic hallmark of Another Country. It is a participatory art installation that deploys the creativity of children and, in the artists’ words, ‘the child in us’.5 The current installation at SCAF resembles a construction site, with visitors to the gallery creating houses and installing
4. Concrete Culture, UNSW Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, July 2006. 5. Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan, unpublished draft exhibition notes, 2011.
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them within a context that is permanently in transition. A fusion of art, sculpture and architecture, a co-production between connoisseurs and amateurs, In-Habit defines a new collaborative relationship that transcends boundaries between communities, disciplines and social identities. As in Thomas More’s story, Utopia, in the Aquilizans’ InHabit everyday people democratically create a society with everyday materials. ‘By differentiating usages of our daily objects, behaviours and modes of practice as well as tactics used to intervene into and subvert (détourner) the social orders through such re-invented ways of doing things we … can also obtain new freedom in furthering visions of what society could be.’6 In proposing their vision of what society could be, the Aquilizans consciously approach life and art from the same starting point: ‘home’. Another Country itself has an itinerant history, having been recreated by local communities of (mostly) children in various parts of the world, most recently at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum in early 2012. At Tate Liverpool for the 2010 Liverpool Biennale, the artists involved the local school and migrant communities in creating precarious towers of handmade boats and house/boats that were ‘moored’ around a central jetty. The work alluded not only to contemporary issues around migration, but to the infamous child migrant scheme between Britain and Commonwealth countries such as Canada and Australia. For an exhibition in Singapore the following year, the handmade little boats and houses were reconfigured into an oversize houseboat, laden with the hopes and dreams of Liverpool’s child migrants; and for the Asian Art Biennale in Taiwan, visitors were invited to share their experience of migration in the form of written notes suspended from inverted hulls. At the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, New Zealand in 2011, local children were invited to make boats and houses from cardboard removal boxes, in reference to the artists’ consistent themes of migration and impermanence, but also referencing Maori migration canoes, pointing to the (discredited) anthropological story that Maori tribes immigrated to New Zealand in seven canoes. The Aquilizans created The Eighth Fleet, a large cardboard vessel suspended upside down from the ceiling, symbolising the improbability and inversion of migration mythologies. Referencing Arte Povera, the gesture was reminiscent of Luciano Fabro’s Golden Italy, 1971, a gilded map of Italy suspended upside down from the ceiling. While Fabro’s (literally revolutionary) gesture was created in the context of late sixties political radicalism in Europe, deliberately proposing the turning on its head of European culture, the Aquilizans’ use of everyday materials, and, in the case of The
6. Hou Hanru, curatorial statement, The Spectacle of the Everyday: 10th Biennale of Lyon, Les Presses du Réel, France, 2009, p. 26. Opposite Terminal: Project Belonging, 2006 Personal effects, boxes, scent (Sampaquita flower), balikbayan boxes (homecoming boxes) Installation view, Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines, Manila, 2006 Photo: Ocs Alvarez
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Eighth Fleet, inversion, addresses the major social issue of our era: displacement. Impermanent materials register the ephemerality of the subject matter – migratory cultures. In doing so, the artists’ practice consciously subverts the usual delineation between ephemeral and permanent art, in turn questioning cultural concepts of transitory and established societies as dichotomous entities. The boat is a powerful symbol of migration and transience; for the Badjao people of the southern Philippines it represents a way of life. In recent decades the Badjao ‘sea gypsies’ have been hounded from their traditional seaborne existence by large-scale commercial fisheries and small-scale dynamite fishing with cyanide, both of which have depleted income and food sources. In addition, the geopolitical articulation and enforcement of boundaries within large tracts of waterways, formerly considered ‘open’ seas, has resulted in forced sedentarisation programmes. The Badjao occupy a kind of heterotopia – neither on land nor sea, neither belonging to nor separate from Filipino society. The term ‘heterotopia’ – used to describe transitory, marginal areas alien to the unified society of the majority – was adapted by Foucault from the terminology of medical science, in which it simply means ‘wrong place’. It is a useful framework for the discussion of interstitial spaces, such as that occupied by the Badjao. In their case, living on the sea is deemed wrong by the law, while living on land is wrong for their culture. Their heterotopic solution is a compensatory zone on the water’s edge, a no-man’s land between illegality on the seas and discrimination on land. Aside from diving for coins for tourists on boats, the Badjao people also dive for and sell pearls on city streets, streets on which they are unwelcome as residents. Perched precariously on the water’s edge, they reluctantly inhabit the inhospitable territory of ‘Nolandia’. In Thomas More’s exposition, Nolandia and Tallstoria are two of the regions adjoining the nation of Utopia. While the Aquilizans’ cardboard city, In-Habit, might represent Utopia, the children of Badjao who feature in the film installation live far from a place that might resemble Utopia. They are suspended between their ‘Nolandia’ makeshift homes on the periphery of society and the inventive tall stories (‘Tallstoria’) of their rap narratives performed for survival on city streets. These children are among the most displaced on earth, yet possess the adaptability and resilience required to negotiate an existence fuelled by the flotsam and jetsam of established urban structures. The sense of celebration in imaginative solutions that connect the stories of society’s haves and have-nots, is at the core of the Aquilizans’ practice.
Opposite Wings, 2009 Used rubber slippers (thongs) collected from Singaporean correctional facility, glass fibre reinforced plastic and metal Installation view, Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines, 2009 Photo: Ocs Alvarez Overleaf Project M201: In God We Trust, 2003 Stainless steel, jeep parts, video component, domestic objects Installation view, 8Q sam / Singapore Art Museum, Singapore Collection: National Heritage Board (Singapore Art Museum) Photo: Alfredo Aquilizan Pages 102–105 Be-longing: In-Transit, 2006 Personal effects, boxes, scent (Sampaquita flower), balikbayan boxes (homecoming boxes) Installation view, Zones of Contact: 2006 Biennale of Sydney, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, Australia Photos: Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan
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An Interview with Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan Dolla S. Merrillees General Manager – Artistic and Educational Programmes Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
Dolla S. Merrillees: Your artistic practice and projects have been described as an ongoing series of ‘cumulative transactions’:1 the work with local communities, the workshops for children, the sourcing, amassing and sorting of things. Can you explain the relationship between In-Habit, your Be-longing series, 1997–2006, and the recent Passing Through: Project Passages, 2012? Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan: Be-longing began as a series of installations dealing with the ideas of identity, home, family and journey. The installations showed our instinct for collecting, as well as our techniques of exposition. For example, we stayed overnight in a museum and marked our stay by displaying objects from our own home. We collected mementoes from relatives in Australia; shoes, toothbrushes and energy drink bottles from Japan; colourful blankets – and the recorded dreams of their former owners – from Korea; and identification photographs and domestic items from the Philippines. In most of our installations, communities and the audience are invited to engage proactively in the production of the artwork and, in the process, create communal experiences. When we and our five children moved to Australia in 2006, our relocation and settlement redefined our concept of space and site. The Be-longing project shifted to another series of works entitled Another Country. This series forms a quasi-documentation of our migration and investigates how art transforms the sensibilities of individuals who have been active participants in the creative process. In-Habit is part of the Another Country project and, in keeping with our previous works, deploys strategies of building, accumulating and rearranging physical objects. In-Habit centres on individuals and their personal stories, histories and belongings within the context of a marginalised community in the Philippines – the Badjao, or sea gypsies. Passing Through, exhibited earlier this year in Brisbane, concludes the Another Country series. Describe the process of filming in Mindanao in the Philippines and the experience of working with the Badjao children. The Badjao, or sea gypsies, are a minority group in the Philippines. They originate from a Malay ethnic group that
This edited interview with Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan was conducted through email exchanges in April 2012. 1. Lynne Seear, ‘Flexible citizenship: The Art of Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan’, Art & Australia, vol. 47, no. 2, 2009, p. 306.
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has lived on the sea for centuries, plying a tract of ocean between the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. The Badjao traditionally spend most of their lives on boats that are typically just 5 metres long and 1.5 metres wide, landing ashore only to trade fish for staples such as rice and water. We first encountered the Badjao children on one of our trips back to the Philippines in 2008 and immediately the idea for a project materialised. However, it took three years before we had the chance to actually begin the project. We flew to Davao, which is the largest city of Mindanao, a southern island, where some of the Badjao have settled. It was not as easy as we thought it would be: when we arrived we were warned about sensitive issues such as exploitation and conflicts with other subgroups like the Bisayan and the Moros. We had to be extra careful and approach the Badjao by going through particular channels. We had to seek permission from the local government to connect with the village leader and coordinate the whole project. All of these requirements made it more difficult to get on with the filming. It was also difficult to convey the idea of the project because of the language barrier. We decided to film outside the community in places where the children usually perform their rap to earn money. Rap is now a popular music form played on radios, loud boom boxes and MP3 players. We discovered migrant Bisaya and Moro children who also have to rap to earn extra change in order to survive. These groups of children have, in one way or another, met along the streets in the city and local villages where they perform. In the end we filmed a mixture of all the kids – they all have to adjust to survive. But unlike the others, the Badjao kids embraced materials that might connect them to notions of being a Badjao. They played their beats on improvised ‘tambols’ (drums) using PVC pipes, aluminium wrappers of junk food, and rubber. They also mixed their Sama language songs with Bisaya rap, in the process highlighting their identity within an assimilated society in Davao, their adaptive, adapted, second home after the Sulu Archipelago. You have described your experience with the Badjao community as heartbreaking. How did you hear about their plight – in particular the rap music of the Badjao children? Being migrants ourselves we have been touched by the plight of this itinerant community. We first encountered these children in the streets of Manila while they were playing their homemade drums to panhandle for money
Opposite and overleaf Passage: The Long Haul (Project Another Country), 2010 Transport cardboard boxes, cardboard boats (handcrafted by migrant children), constructed wooden jetty Installation view, Touched: 2010 Liverpool Biennale, TATE Liverpool, Liverpool, UK Photos: Roger Sinek (p. 108) Alfredo Aquilizan (pp. 110–111)
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during the Christmas holidays. These are the children of Badjao families that, because of the massive relocations during the 1970s, started to move and live in big cities to look for better opportunities and seek an alternative way to survive. Considered as outcasts in the cities, they were forced to beg in the streets. We are interested in the children’s performances, their ability to compose words spontaneously, and the way they express themselves using the genre of a foreign popular music while employing local dialect. Colloquial words are recited rapidly and rhythmically over an accompaniment from a crude makeshift drum. Within the community where we filmed the ‘Tamboleros’ – the Badjao children making and playing the drums – the small children stay in the village and look after themselves while their parents go to the market to peddle. The time we spent with them was an eye-opener; it was heartbreaking to see these children being on their own and taking care of each other while their parents were away earning a living. As the Badjaos have stopped sailing the seas and have made houses on land, they are adopting/adapting to land. However, even though some of the Badjaos have been ‘Christianised’, or have migrated to Davao, their core values and culture as Badjaos remain. They have to innovate in order to survive. Despite trying to assimilate in Davao, they still stand out as Badjaos – their language, the architecture of their households, their proximity to the sea, their sea-based diet and their water playground.
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Your titles often address the idea of journeys and diaspora, of settlement and resettlement, while the works themselves employ unwanted, discarded and redundant materials that are highly orchestrated and radically reordered. For example, In-flight, shown here at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) in 2010 and at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2009, featured thousands of small, recycled handmade planes symbolising exchange, travel and migration. Do you see yourself as employing multiple vernaculars – matching materials, forms and titles – to argue a social position? In our practice we always try to make sense of how the materials on hand relate to an idea. We tend to use everyday materials because the audience can relate to and interact with the artwork, and the materials themselves and the objects they become are signifiers of meaning. Another aspect emphasised in our collaborative projects is the visceral and experiential nature of the installations, whereby sound, scent, taste and touch are each important elements. For example, the In-flight installations at SCAF and Queensland Art Gallery had an ambient sound
component – the sound of an incoming and departing airplane intermixed with the soft background music usually played in an airport waiting lounge. Because of their physical characteristics and the emotions and ideas they bring with them, these elements and materials play an essential role in forming the work; nondescript things become valued through association, rather than being inherently valuable. To answer your question then, yes, most of the time our work indirectly argues social position. ‘Collation’, ‘collections’, ‘cache’, ‘accumulation’ and ‘multiplicity’ are words that have been used again and again in connection with your practice. Historian Philipp Blom deems collecting a ‘philosophical project’ that seeks to ‘make sense of the multiplicity and chaos of the world, and perhaps even to find in it a hidden meaning’.2 Would you agree with this statement? Yes, our projects have become a way to formulate meaning. Our customary practice is to immerse ourselves in the community, employing narratives from the objects and fragments of facts we continuously collect, reconfiguring mundane objects and treating personal gesture as a metaphor of human existence with particular emphasis on contemporary culture.
2. Philipp Blom, To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting, Allen Lane/Penguin, London, UK, 2002. 3. Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, In-Habit project brief, 2011. Overleaf Address, 2008 Personal effects, scent (Sampaquita flower), balikbayan boxes (homecoming boxes) Installation view, Reflection: The World Through Art – Dojima River Biennale, Osaka, Japan Photos: Kazuo Fukunaga
In-Habit is in part a commentary on the millions of Filipinos who live below what is internationally defined as ‘the poverty line’. You describe the Philippines as ‘a country so politicised, so impoverished, that it has generated a collective sense of discontentment and exasperation’.3 Is it the metaphorical meaning that is important here or the artwork as an object of aesthetic contemplation? Or is it somewhere in-between? It is somewhere in-between. All of our artwork is an object of aesthetic contemplation. Pictorial structure, spatial illusions, colour relationships, forms and shapes, and so on, are the basic concerns and the template of our installations. The juxtaposition of these elements, the choice of medium and its processes, the audience’s personal associations in relation to the work based on their experience and background and their engagement with the space created by art – all of these create the work. We are also concerned with the power and significance of objects. We feel that art is a potent tool for creating change, so the metaphorical meaning is habitually considered when creating our work. In-Habit indirectly conveys current issues in the Philippines. What, then, is your idea, or ideal, of the work’s relationship with the viewer? Engagement is the key element in the work; the interhuman relations that go into the artistic production. By
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setting up situations that create responses and fuel a collective interaction, our projects go beyond their material form. Our interest lies in the works providing a platform for exchange through creative processes, negotiations with the audience, audience members as active participants in the production of the meaning of the work, and the repercussions of the work with respect to the audience. How does this sense of reciprocity and exchange, in your collaborations with each other and with local communities, stimulate and inform your artistic practice? In most of our collaborative and community-based projects we aspire to create new relationships within the world and the foundation for these relationships is cocreation. We employ interactive methodology, learning from each other through collaboration and creating in a non-hierarchical way; in most cases, ideas and concepts are the product of these exchanges.
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Does the medium of installation, or ‘total installation’ for that matter, and the use of your material of choice – cardboard – reinforce or emphasise the transient, ephemeral nature of your projects? Cardboard boxes imply impermanence, and they have a history of holding and transporting things. The choice of this material, combined with the medium of installation, supplements the idea of ephemerality and the transitory nature of the concepts that concern our projects. We have been working with the cardboard moving box as a material of choice over and over again for the past few years, notably in the Passage project at the TATE Liverpool in 2010 where we engulfed the entire gallery floor with assemblages of cardboard and packing tape dwelling structures, with upside-down boat roofs viewed through an elevated wooden jetty constructed around the gallery. The installation brings to mind the mercantile history of Liverpool in the nineteenth century as well as it being a major port of departure for migrants bound to Australia and to other parts of the globe. Another installation, Passage: The Eighth Fleet, was created in New Zealand in 2010. We produced a massive inverted boat dwelling, an imagined community built out of boats, referencing the architectural ingenuity of past settlers who upturned their sea craft for shelter. Again, using transport boxes that have already travelled from one place to another is a metaphor for, amongst other things, journeys and the maritime history of migration in Australasia and Oceania. In-Habit will also be built with the recycled cardboard transport boxes to suggest the
temporary settlements of the Badjao in the Philippines. The use of industrial scaffolding also implies the idea of temporary structures as well as stability. This temporary installation made and remade in different sites in varying configurations becomes a reflection on transience, dislocation, and our constructed – and in many cases fabricated – history.
4. Doris von Drathen, ‘Aerial Roots’, in Fiona Tan: Disorient/Dutch Pavilion: la Biennale di Venezia, Kehrerverlag, Heidelberg, Germany, 2009, p. 55.
Are you influenced by the architectural environment of your chosen sites? How does the history and the idea of ‘site’ or ‘place’ inform your thinking for the project? Another Country became a continuous investigation of the notion of ‘place’ through the use of objects and images, so the narrative of the site, and the participation of the locals and the audience, will always be the point of reference of the work. In-Habit is an installation of cardboard boxes crafted into structures simulating Torosiaje, the Badjao’s temporary settlements. These cardboard dwellings on stilts will be created in a series of workshops and by encouraging the audience to create a communal experience by contributing their own communities of dwellings to the gallery installation. Corresponding to the life of the Badjao people, the house constructions will be displaced and transformed by means of meticulous reorganisation; presented together, the objects connote a real or imagined community to offer a reflection on forced or voluntary settlements and a meditation on the impossibility of escaping our own identity and place of origin. German art historian and critic Doris von Drathen writes that ‘it is a fundamental moment of human experience that the awareness of being uprooted not only kindles a wish to return to the place where separation first occurred, but also stirs a desire to go even further back and uncover the very origins of these roots’.4 In your case I would argue that you have transformed this phenomenon into an artistic process. Would you agree? How important is it for you to re-engage with your homeland? Migration has always been a central issue in most of our works. When we decided to leave the Philippines and migrate permanently in 2006, we became a part of that community of migrants who choose to live outside their home/land and to seek a better opportunity and chance. As we painfully integrate ourselves into what we call a rootless land or diaspora, identity is inconstant and its construction becomes a continuous process of negotiation. The need to reconnect, the urge to come back, necessitates the creation of new projects back home where family, memory and nostalgia, language and the difficulty to adapt all become a part of our
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visual vocabulary. We are motivated and sustained by the anxieties and pleasures of a life that is constantly changing, turning our artwork into a quasi-celebration of daily life. I'm interested in this link that you describe between memory and nostalgia – the stories that have been lost and the tales that can be told – and how it is translated into your visual practice. Project Belonging #2, 1999,5 with its collection of personal belongings sourced from Filipinos living in Australia, is one such example. In-Habit, with its interconnected framework, can also be perceived as one such ‘museum of memory’. Would you agree with this? Is it concentrated on individual memory or does it rather deal with some collective experience and phenomena? Project Belonging #2 was a participatory piece created for the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 1999. An invitation to the Filipino community to participate in the project was made through the Filipino community newspaper. Interviews were conducted by our collaborator Ric Aqui (a cousin who was then living in Brisbane) who then borrowed from each family an item they had brought from the Philippines. The objects were individually labelled to identify where they were originally from, where the family lived now, and the names of the owners. It was an extraordinary and quite voyeuristic insight into the lives of these families. In the exhibition the objects were presented on a bed of salt, accompanied by the scent of the Philippine national flower and the ambient sound of the recorded interviews. At the close of the exhibition, all of these objects were returned safely to their owners. In-Habit can also be perceived as a museum of memory. It is partly an interactive and progressive installation: public participants contribute to the production of the work before the show and throughout its duration. With the premise of home and nostalgia, participants create a house fashioned out of cardboard boxes then add their ‘home’ to the main installation, contributing to an expanding formation based on the Badjao houses on stilts. Eventually, the whole installation will be a construction of individual objects based on collective memory. Like the Be-longing project, the InHabit installation manufactures an imagined community; in the process it also becomes a museum of memory. Both installations paint an ersatz ‘portrait’, illustrating the past and present of a specific community.
5. Exhibited in the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 1999. Opposite and overleaf Passage (The Eighth Fleet), 2011 Transport cardboard boxes, cardboard boats (handcrafted by migrant children) Installation view, Stealing the Senses, GovettBrewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand Photos: Bryan James Pages 124–125 In-Habit; Dreamhouses: Project Another Country, 2012 Transport cardboard boxes, packing tape, cardboard houses (handcrafted by migrant children) Installation view, Kids Fest, Immigration Museum, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia Photo: Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan Pages 126–127 Passing-Through (Passages): Project Another Country, 2012 Transport cardboard boxes, personal effects, various studio materials, sound, portable heater Installation view, POP Postgraduate + Other Projects Gallery, Brisbane, Australia Photo: Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan
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In-Habit: Project Another Country Colour Plates
Pages 130â&#x20AC;&#x201C;151 In-Habit: Project Another Country, 2012 Used transport cardboard boxes, packing tape, handcrafted cardboard houses, makeshift drums and sound, single channel video projection plus 5 LCD screen installation Installation views, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, and film stills Photos: Jacob Ring Commissioned by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney
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Artists’ Selected Biography
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan 1962 Born Ballesteros, Cagayan province, Philippines 1997 Master of Arts in Fine Arts Anglia Polytechnic University Norwich School of Arts and Design Norwich, United Kingdom 1986–87 Art Student League of New York New York City, US 1986 Bachelor of Fine Arts The Philippine Women's University College of Fine Arts and Music Current PhD, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan 1965 Born Manila, Philippines 1986 Education/Bachelor of Communication Arts Assumption College Makati City, Philippines
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Collaborative Projects and Group Exhibitions 2012 Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan – In-Habit: Project Another Country, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia In-Flight III, National Heritage Board, Singapore Passage II, Immigration Museum, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia Boysen KnoxOut Project: EDSA, TAO Inc., Philippines Sustain Project, London 2012, Chinatown Art Centre, London, UK Yes Naturally, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Netherlands Passing Through: Project Passages, POP Post Graduate + Other Projects Gallery, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, Australia In-Habit, Special Project, Art Stage Singapore, Singapore Marina Bay Sands, Singapore 2011 In-Flight, In-Transit, In-Habit, Immigration Museum, Melbourne, Australia Address, Hong Kong Project, Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines Stories of Dreams and Reality, Mabini Art Project, Rossi & Rossi Art Gallery, London, UK Medi(t)ation: 3rd Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan National Artists’ Self-portrait Prize, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, Australia Negotiating Home, History and Nation, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore Stealing the Senses, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand 2010 Beacons of Archipelago: Contemporary Art from South East Asia, Arario Gallery, Seoul, Korea Babel Projekt, Woodford Folk Festival, Woodford, Queensland, Australia Contemporary Art for Contemporary Kids, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia Touched: Liverpool Biennale, TATE Liverpool, Liverpool, UK HomeLessHome, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel Last Words, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia Scope: International Contemporary Art Show, Basel, Switzerland Flight II, Slot Gallery, Sydney, Australia Duetto: Another Country, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, Australia Fragmented Landscapes, Jan Manton Art, Brisbane, Australia Dis-close, Boxcopy Contemporary Art Space, Brisbane, Australia
Suburbia, Redcliffe Regional Art Gallery, Redcliffe, Queensland, Australia Stock, Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines Plethora, Drawing Room, Makati City, Philippines Filipinas, Jaime Gil Biedma Fellowship, Casa Asia, Barcelona, Spain 2009 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia Carnivale Collaborata, Woodford Folk Festival, Woodford, Queensland, Australia Satellite APT, Jan Manton Art, Brisbane, Australia Arc Biennial of Art, Fort Lytton, Brisbane, Australia World of Contemporary Art: Dojima Biennale, Osaka, Japan Artissima, Artes Contemporanea, Turin, Italy Art Summit India, New Delhi, India Mabini Art Project, Drawing Room Gallery, New York, US World Selection of Contemporary Art: 2009 Biennale Cuvee, OK Contemporary Art Centre, Linz, Austria 4 Continents, 10 Biennales, 20 Artists, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania 2008 Wonder: 2nd Singapore Biennale 2008, Marina Bay, Singapore Concrete Culture, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, Australia Dream Blanket Project, Logan Art Centre, Queensland, Australia Handle with Care: 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia 2007 Moved, Galleria, Queensland College of Arts Gallery, Brisbane, Australia Another Country, Jan Manton Art, Brisbane, Australia 2006 Filipiniana: Be-longing Project (Homebound), Centro Conde Duque, Madrid, Spain Zones of Contact: Biennale of Sydney, Ivan Dougherty/ Tin Shed Gallery, Sydney, Australia Echigo-Tsumari Art Necklace Project: 2006, EchigoTsumari Triennial, Doichi Tokamachi, Japan 2005 Ten Days on the Island: HWY 1 Project, Old Railway Station, Penguin, Tasmania Dream Blanket Project: Dreaming Now, Rose Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts, US
2004 A Grain of Dust a Drop of Water: 5th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea Quantum Leap: Biwako Biennale, Niigata Prefecture, Shiga, Japan 2003 ZOU – Zone of Urgency, Dreams and Conflicts – The Viewer’s Dictatorship: 50th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 2002 Culture Meets Culture: Busan Biennale, Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, Korea Under Construction: New Dimensions of Asian Art, Japan Foundation Asia Center/Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Fixation: Notions of Obsessions, Lopez Memorial Museum, Ortigas Center, Pasig City, Philippines 2000 One Closer to the Other: 6th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba. 1999 Beyond the Future: 3rd Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia Communication – Channels for Hope: 1st Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale 1999, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka City, Japan Philip Morris Asian Arts Awards, National Art Gallery Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1997 Individual and Memory: 6th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba Asa Nisi Masa: MAFA Degree Show, Norwich Art Gallery, Norwich, UK 1999 Manila Art on Art Envelope: Manila-Pisa Mail Art Exhibition, Exchange Programme, Pisa, Italy 1988 Annual Merit Art Exhibition: Art Student League, New York, New York, US 1987 Painting Show, Verna Luz Gallery, New Jersey, US Philart: Annual Exhibition, Ysmael Gallery, New York, US 1986 4th ASEAN Youth Painting Workshop, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan are represented by Jan Manton Art, Brisbane The Drawing Room, Manila, Philippines
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Artists’ Selected Bibliography
Exhibition catalogues 2012 Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan – In-Habit: Project Another Country, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia. 2010 Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan: Plethora, The Drawing Room, Makati City, Philippines. Azoulay, Ariella, HomeLessHome, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel. Cruz, Joselina, ‘The limits of travel’, in Last Words, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia. Domela, Paul (ed.), Touched: The Book, Liverpool Biennale, Liverpool, UK. Flores, Patrick, ‘Archipelago of allegories’, in Verso Manila, Gallerie Verso Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy. Flores, Patrick, ‘No country for natives’, Beacons of Archipelago: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia, Cheonan, Korea. Ryan, Kate & McColm, Donna, ‘Collaboration and contemporary art projects’, in Contemporary Art for Contemporary Kids, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. 2009 Hawker, Michael, ‘In-flight’, in 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia Hoffie, Pat, Carnivale Collaborata 08/09 (2009 Woodford Folk Festival), Sustainable Environment through Culture in the Asia Pacific (SECAP), Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Ngui, Mathew, ‘Address: Project Another Country’, World Selection of Contemporary Art: 2009 Biennale Cuvee, OK Contemporary Art Centre, Linz, Austria. 2008 Flores, Patrick, ‘Misgivings’, in Sentimental Value, Philippine Contemporary Art Exhibition, Soka Art Center, Beijing, China. Guardiola, Juan, ‘Filipinas. Arte Identitad y Discurso Postcolonial’, in Longing-Belonging, Casa Asia, Barcelona, Spain. Hou Hanru, ‘Addressing the blackhole’, in Felicity Fenner (ed.), Handle with Care: 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, Adelaide, Australia. Ngui, Mathew, ‘Drawing out: aspects of culture and communities’, in Wonder: 2nd Singapore Biennale 2008, Singapore Biennale, Singapore. 2006 Flores, Patrick, ‘Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan’, in Zones of Contact: 2006 Biennale of Sydney, Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
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Guardiola, Juan, ‘Filipiniana’, in Memorias del Sobredesarollo (1986–2006): Emigracion y Diaspora, Centro Conde Duque, Madrid, Spain. Kitagawa, Fram, ‘Echigo-Tsumari Art Necklace Project’, in 2006 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial Committee, Gendaikikakushitsu Publishers, Tokyo, Japan. Merewether, Charles, ‘Taking place: Acts of survival for a time to come”, in Zones of Contact: 2006 Biennale of Sydney, Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. 2004 A Grain of Dust a Drop of Water: 5th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea. 2003 Cruz, Joselina, ‘Going for a ride’, in 50th La Biennale de Venezia International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Grafiche Peruzzo, Vegianno for Marsilio Editori, Venice, Italy. Flores, Patrick D., ‘Vehicle’, in 50th La Biennale di Venezia International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Venice, Italy. 2002 Flores, Patrick, ‘Asia’s art map’, in Kataoka Mami (ed.), Under Construction: New Dimensions of Asian Art, Japan Foundation Asia Center/Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2001 Tanedo, Rochit (ed.) ‘Living/leaving home through art’, in Who Owns Women's Bodies, Creative Collective Center Inc., Manila, Philippines. Cruz, Joselina, SPINcycle, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines. Flores Patrick & Atsuo Yamamoto, Crafting Economies/ From the Sea of Trees (joint catalogue), Cultural Center of the Philippines & Ashiya City Museum of Art and History. 1999 Datuin, Flaudette May, ‘Home. Family. Journey’, in Beyond the Future: 3rd Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. Enriquez, Hilda Maria, ‘Communication en Tiempos deFiciles’, in 7th Havana Biennial, Centro Cultural de España, Havana, Cuba. Cruz, Joselina, ‘Hallowed obsessions’, in Fixation – Notions of Obsession. Lopez Memorial Museum, Pasig City, Philippines. Hildawa, Isidro G, ’An overview of the Philippine contemporary art scene’, in Communication – Channels for Hope: 1st Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale 1999, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka City, Japan. Hirayama Akiko, ‘An interview’, in Document of Art Exchange Program: 1st Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale 1999, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka City, Japan. 1997 El individuo y su memoria: Sexta Bienal de la Habana, Association Française d'Action Artistique, Paris, France.
Articles and reviews 2012 Lalwani, Bahrti, ‘Negotiating home, history & nation’, Eyeline, no. 75. 2011 Clark, Andrew, ‘Getting out there: Artists in region’, Art Lines, April. 2010 Aquilizan, Alfredo & Isabel, ‘My eight’, Art Asia Pacific, no. 70, September–October. Chuaunsu, Jewel, ‘Collective memory’, Contemporary Art Philippines, no. 10. Guazon, Tessa Maria, ‘Engaging with audience’, Asian Art News, vol. 20, no. 4, July/August. Hoffie, Pat, ‘Art, labour, love’, Art Monthly Australia, no. 231, July. Stanhope, Zara, ‘Contemporary visual arts, Eyeline, no. 71. Tunnel, Camilla, ‘Regional touring program with Alfredo &Isabel: Cairns, Hopevale, Cooktown & Rossville’, Art Lines, February. 2009 Cain, Ali, ‘Creative recycling: Creating art from found objects’, Mercedes Magazine Australia. Hoffie, Pat, ‘Acruing invisibles’, Contemporary Visual Art + Culture Broadsheet, no. 38.4, December 2009. Raffel, Suhanya, ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennale’, Art Lines, April 2009. Seear, Lynne, ‘Flexible citizenship’, Art & Australia, vol. 47, no. 2, summer. 2008 Arumpac, Adjani, ‘Things left and things kept”, Flow, no. 2. Cruz, Joselina, ‘Projecting Southeast Asia’, C-Arts: Asian Contemporary Art & Culture, vol. 5, September– October 2008. Fairley, Gina, ‘Post-curiosity?’, Eyeline, no. 68. Fenner, Felicity, ‘Critics choice’, Australian Art Collector, no. 46, October–December. Fenner, Felicity, ‘Singapore Biennale’, Art in America, December. Ng, Elaine W., ‘Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan’, Art Asia Pacific Almanac, no. 3. Ngui, Matthew, ‘Two installations at the Singapore Biennale 2008’, Universe in Universe Magazine, September. Wan, Belinda, ‘Sophomores struggle’, I-S Magazine, no. 425. 2007 Fairley, Gina, ‘Project. Memory. Migration, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan’, Eyeline, no. 62. Ng, Elaine W. (ed.), ‘Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan’, Art Asia Pacific Almanac 2007, no. 2.
2006 Ng, Elaine W. (ed.), ‘Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan’, Art Asia Pacific Almanac 2005–2006, no. 1. Silva, John, ‘Filipiniana in Madrid: A contemporary retelling of Spanish our legacy’, Starweek, vol. XX, no. 20. 2003 ‘Art brief: The 50th Venice Biennale’, Art Manila Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 2. ‘Art brief: The NCCA launches Sungduan-3’, Art Manila Quarterly, vol.4, no. 2. Aurella, Erwin, ‘Postcards: Art on the beach’, Men’s Zone Magazine, vol. 7, no. 1, July. Castillo, Kaz, ‘Art scene: Beached art’, Preview, vol. 9, no. 7, August. Cruz, Joselina, ‘People: Lingering lament’, Mega Magazine, October. De Quiros, Conrdo, ‘Biyaheng Venice’, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 7 May. De Veyra, Lourd, ‘Beach art’, Mabuhay Travel & Lifestyle, July. Guillermo, Alice G., ‘Art: An odyssey of objects’, Today’s Weekender (Philippines), 13 April. Guillermo, Alice G., ‘Bamboo in the sea wind’ and ‘An Odyssey of Objects’, World Sculpture News, vol. 9, no. 3. Neru, Nikki M., ‘Sun burned and blissful in Camarines Norte’, Stopover: The Travel, Lifestyle & Success Magazine, vol. 2, no. 7. Paguyo, Magazin, ‘Bicol express’, Chalk, vol. 3, no. 10, July. Reyes, Emilio, ‘High art on the hot beach’, Metro Home and Entertaining, vol. 1, no. 1. Robinson, Joel, ‘The construction sites of Asian art’, World Sculpture News, vol. 9, no. 1. Tejero, Constantino, ‘How a military hardware was turned into folk art’, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 5 May. Tejero, Constantino, ‘Two Filipino artists in Venice Biennale’, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 3 March. 2002 Flores, Patrick D., ‘Aquilizan’, Asian Art News, vol.12, no. 5, September/October. Rojas, Joy, ‘Marrying art and life’, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, 10 February 2002. 2001 ‘International Awards for the Arts’, University of the Philippines Arts Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 2. Ruiz, Jose Tence, ‘3 Trilogy Triennial’, Transit-A Quarterly, vol.2, no. 2. 1999 Lloyd, Wilson Ann, ‘Reorienting: Japan rediscovers Asia’, Art in America, vol. 87, no.10, October.
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Contributors
Dr Gene Sherman AM is Chairman and Executive Director of Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. She has a specialised knowledge of art, literary theory and French and English literature and spent seventeen years teaching, researching and lecturing at secondary and tertiary levels. As Director of Sherman Galleries (1986–2007) she organised up to twenty-two exhibitions annually, including regional and national touring exhibitions within Australia, and international touring exhibitions through the Asia-Pacific region. Gene and Brian Sherman have sponsored a Master of Fine Arts Administration student at the College of Fine Arts, The University of New South Wales (1997–2007), a studio at Bundanon and a contemporary Australian art-research room at the Schaeffer Fine Arts Library, The University of Sydney. Dr Sherman is currently Deputy Chair of the National Portrait Gallery Board, Canberra; a member of the Art & Australia Advisory Board, the International Association of Art Critics and the Tate Asia- Pacific Acquisitions Committee; and serves as an Asialink Asia Literacy Ambassador, a role that involves inspiring young people to become Asia literate and thus expand their career and life opportunities. She regularly lectures to a wide range of institutions on topics such as gallery management, the art of collecting, philanthropy, private foundations, Australian and Asian contemporary art, and contemporary Japanese fashion. Dr Sherman was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government (2003) and a Doctorate of Letters honoris causa by The University of Sydney (2008). She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010 for her cultural philanthropy and her support of emerging and established artists.
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Felicity Fenner is based at The University of New South Wales as Senior Curator and Senior Lecturer at the College of Fine Arts (COFA), and Chief Curator at the National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA). Over the past twenty years, since relocating from London to Sydney, Felicity has curated many Australian and international exhibitions. She was Australia’s Curator and Commissioner for the 9th Triennale-India in 1997, visiting curator at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore, 1998–99, visiting lecturer on the Curating Contemporary Art programme at the Royal College of the Arts, London, 2003 and curator-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia in 2010. In addition to many exhibitions for COFA’s Ivan Dougherty Gallery, her curatorial projects include Primavera 2005 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Handle with Care: 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art; Once Removed, Australia’s group exhibition of emerging artists at the 2009 Venice Biennale; and Michael Nyman’s Cine Opera at Sydney Park Brickworks in 2011. Felicity is a member of the City of Sydney’s Public Art Advisory Panel, consultant to the Macquarie Group and, in 2012, a judge for the Blake Prize and the National Portrait Gallery’s inaugural I.D. Digital Portraiture Award. She writes about contemporary art for a range of publications including Art in America, Art & Australia, Artlink and Art Asia Pacific, of which she is a Contributing Editor. She is the recipient of Australia Council and Australian Research Council grants, including funding for NIEA’s current Curating Cities project, 2010–15.
Dolla S. Merrillees is General Manager – Artistic and Educational Programmes, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Previously she worked as Director – Visual Arts, Museums and Galleries NSW, where she initiated and oversaw Leading from the Edge: 2005 National Public Galleries Summit, and as Exhibition Manager for the 2000 and 2002 Biennales of Sydney. As Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts and Design at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and Curator of Contemporary Craft at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, she contributed to projects such as 4 + 1:5 Contemporary Australian Designs, 1999, Contemporary Australian Craft, 1998, and Alvar Aalto: Points of Contact, 1996. She is the recipient of two Ian Potter Foundation Cultural Grants (1997; 2001) and over the course of her career has provided specialist advice to the not-for-profit sector on strategic planning, exhibition development and tours, programming and fundraising. She has written extensively for print and online media. Recent writing projects include The Woodcutter’s Wife, 2007 and ‘Memento mori (remember that you must die)’ in Hair: Trunk Series, 2009. She is currently working on her forthcoming book.
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Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
Previous Exhibitions
Acknowledgements
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) was established in April 2008 as a not-for-profit organisation to champion research, education and exhibitions of significant and innovative contemporary art from Australia, the Asia- Pacific region and the Middle East. SCAF works closely with artists in commissioning new work and developing exhibitions that energise and respond to the gallery’s four-part complex comprising a large exhibition area, mini ‘out-site’ space, versatile theatre annexe and Zen garden. Extensive projects are developed through partnerships with public art institutions at a regional, state and national level while broad public engagement with contemporary art is fostered through publishing and forum programmes. In addition, Sherman Visual Arts Residency (SVAR), located directly across the road from the gallery, offers a supportive environment and accommodation for visiting artists, filmmakers, architects, writers, curators and scholars. The experience of developing Sherman Galleries (1986–2007) as a respected commercial and educational enterprise within the international art world underpins the Foundation at both a conceptual and practical level. Dr Gene Sherman AM, SCAF Chairman and Executive Director, has drawn on her extensive international networks to establish the Foundation, and initiates and guides its activities in collaboration with an advisory board of respected peers: Andrew Cameron, Doug Hall AM, John Kaldor AM, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Dr Claire Roberts and Michael Whitworth. SCAF is a member of CIMAM, the International Committee of ICOM for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.
Ai Weiwei: Under Construction 1 May – 26 July 2008 Presented in partnership with Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney
SCAF sincerely thanks Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan for the dedication, tireless commitment and immense creativity they have brought to this project and exhibition. Thanks also to Felicity Fenner for her insightful essay on the Aquilizans’ artistic practice.
Jonathan Jones: Untitled (The Tyranny of Distance) 14 August – 11 October 2008 Jitish Kallat: Aquasaurus 25 October – 20 December 2008 The View from Elsewhere 19 March – 13 June 2009 Presented in partnership with the Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA 3 July – 26 September 2009 Charwei Tsai: Water, Earth and Air 23 October – 19 December 2009 Fiona Tan: Coming Home 19 March – 12 June 2010 Presented in association with the National Art School, Sydney Brook Andrew: The Cell 9 July – 18 September 2010 Presented in association with the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane On tour to IMA, 25 September – 20 November 2010; MONA FOMA, Hobart, 14 – 20 January 2011; GovettBrewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ, 12 March – 6 June 2011; PICA, Perth, 9 July – 21 August 2011 Contemporary Art for Contemporary Kids 8 October – 18 December 2010 Presented in partnership with the Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Yang Fudong: No Snow on the Broken Bridge 18 March – 4 June 2011 On tour to IMA, Brisbane, 2 July – 13 August 2011 Dinh Q. Lê: Erasure 8 July – 10 September 2011 Tokujin Yoshioka: Waterfall 7 October – 17 December 2011 Janet Laurence: After Eden 16 March – 19 May 2012
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We remain eternally grateful to Brian Sherman for his focused, passionate and unwavering support of SCAF’s activities.
The following individuals have provided invaluable assistance with this project: Caroline Baum Gerald McMaster Tarron Ruiz-Avila Margaret Throsby Kathy Cree, Catherine Chesterman and students, Erskineville Public School Anne Hastings, Grant McCorquodale, Jackie Black, Louise Heilpern and students, Emanuel School Thank you, as always, to Johnnie Walker, A.R.T., Tokyo, for his wise and sensitive advice and to the Nelson Meers Foundation for their ongoing generosity. Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan wholeheartedly appreciate Gene and Brian Sherman’s support, which has made it possible for this project to be realised, and the SCAF team’s dedication and unwavering assistance. We are grateful to the schools, individuals and communities that contributed to the project and to the following people who, in one way or another, have made it possible: Adjani Arumpac Abigail Christenson Felicity Fenner Dr Patrick Flores Abraham and Juria Garcia Dr Pat Hoffie Meriam Faith Palma Jun Villalon Ben Wickes Badjao Community Seaside II, Barangay Matina Aplaya, Davao City, Philippines Lolita Adjari, Badjao Community Health Worker Badjao Tambolero-Rappers: Pedro ‘Junjun’ Casamero, Diego ‘Manok’ Ladja, Dante ‘Tuloy’ Lampara, Esteban ‘Teban’ Leddet and Jetli’ Jetli’ Turani Thanks to our family and friends, most especially our loving and supportive children, Miguel, Diego, Amihan, Leon and Aniway, who are our motivation and inspiration in our journey through life.
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Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan In-Habit: Project Another Country Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 22 June – 25 August 2012 Published by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 16–20 Goodhope Street Paddington NSW 2021 ABN 25 122 280 200 www.sherman-scaf.org.au
©
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Copyright in the essays is held by the authors. Copyright in the images is held by the artist unless otherwise indicated. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-inPublication entry Author: Aquilizan, Alfredo Juan. Title: Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Isabel GaudinezAquilizan. In-Habit: Project Another Country / prepared by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. ISBN: 9780980776348 (pbk) Subjects: Aquilizan, Alfredo Juan – Exhibitions. Gaudinez-Aquilizan, Isabel – Exhibitions. Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation – Exhibitions. Art, Modern – 21st century – Exhibitions. Art, Australian – New South Wales – 21st century – Exhibitions. Other Authors/Contributors: Gaudinez-Aquilizan, Isabel. Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Dewey Number: 700.7499441
Proudly supported by
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Chairman, Executive Director Dr Gene Sherman AM Associate Director Amanda Henry General Manager – Artistic and Educational Programmes Dolla S. Merrillees Executive Assistant to Gene Sherman Laura Brandon Communications and Events Coordinator Aaron de Souza Administration Assistant Kate Scardifield Exhibition and Catalogue Management Dolla S. Merrillees and Amanda Henry Advisory Board Andrew Cameron, Doug Hall AM, John Kaldor AM, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Dr Claire Roberts, Michael Whitworth Communications Adviser Michael Young
Design Mark Gowing Design Editor Fiona Egan Proofreader Sue Elphinstone Printed in Australia by Ligare Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation is a not-forprofit organisation providing a platform for innovative visual artists primarily from Asia, Australia and the Pacific Rim. All donations over $2 are tax deductible and will support our exhibition, educational, public and artist-in-residence programmes. All images courtesy the artists. Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders and collection owners. The video component of In-Habitat was filmed with the permission of the Badjao community.