Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan Bring Their Migrant Narratives to London

Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan’s evolving art practice arrives in Europe, reflecting on home, history, and the mapping of memory.

Last May, the gallery Ames Yavuz opened its new London space with Ellipsis, a solo exhibition by husband-wife artist duo Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan. It featured four major projects that collectively reflect their inquiry on themes of displacement, labor, and migration. The show is the pair’s first solo exhibition in Europe and mounted two years after their major survey at Jakarta’s Museum MACAN in 2022.

For over two decades, the Aquilizans have cultivated a collaborative artistic practice that is context-responsive, emphasizing the production of time-based and site-specific works. The artists consider these outputs as documentation of the more critical aspect of their work, which is anchored in the practice of engagement and community immersion. “Our work is about engagement,” Alfredo says. “So, with the community, when you talk about engagement, it is about the place or the site of the work, the materials, the contexts, and in the end, the engagement with the audience where the meaning of the work multiplies.”

The exhibition begins with Passage, a site-specific sculptural cardboard installation. The series depicts makeshift dwellings constructed from ephemeral materials that challenge the nature of home, shelter, and belonging. Rooted in the realities of migration and displacement, these sculptural forms explore the emotional and physical tensions of community building while living in transient spaces. 

Meanwhile, a 16-panel installation of piña cloth comprises See/Through. Between 2021 and 2025, the duo collaborated with a community of embroiderers in Lumban, Laguna, to create large-scale, transparent panels. Commissioned by Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art, the fibers were meticulously processed and woven by weavers on Panay Island, specifically in Aklan. Artisans from Lumban employed the traditional Philippine embroidery technique callado to adorn hand-stitched illustrations tracing the fruit’s migration from South America to the Philippines, highlighting intricate narratives of early global trades. The map traces the movement of pineapples, which was introduced to the Philippines through the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade from 1565 to 1815. 

Iterations of their most recognized work, the Left Wing Project, are found at the center of the exhibition. In the curatorial essay, art critic Marv Recinto writes, “Beginning from the left and with these tools’ handles as the base of the shoulder, the Aquilizans meticulously overlay these blades to form a bird’s left wing. Through these sculptures, the artists play with multiple contractions between materiality, form, and meaning: the literal heaviness of the steel blades juxtaposes the implied levity of the wing, and it is within this kind of tension that much of the Aquilizans find meaning.” 

The series emerged while the artists were invited to a residency by Ark Gallery in Yogyakarta in 2015, where they noticed signages containing the words “Belok Kiri Jalan Terus.” The phrase loosely translates to “turn left and go ahead” and doubled as a secret code between communist allies during Indonesia’s period of political unrest and anti-communist violence from 1965 to 1966. During this time, the country also began to modernize its agricultural economy while shifting toward industrialization and the services sector. These changes had a drastic impact on farmers, resulting in a decrease in the sector’s employment rate. The artists quickly identified similar issues in the Philippines, prompting them to investigate the declining blacksmith industry in Bicol, where most of the materials for the Left Wing Project were sourced. 

Another installation piece is Commonwealth, where 56 crowns made from cooking oil tins represent the 56 states that were once all part of the British Empire. The series started in 2014 while the couple still lived in Brisbane and were inspired by Gough Whitlam’s 1972 election policy speech, “It’s Time,” which influenced the historic victory of Australia’s Labor party after 23 years of conservative rule. “The Commonwealth series takes on new meaning with its inaugural showing in London, as the original site of English imperialism,” Recinto notes.

While the exhibition is packed with symbolism and allusions to the past and the complex aspects of history, it also paves the way for us to rethink and re-imagine a world that we would like to live in. Within the objects presented are multiple meanings that should encourage us to define the future in the same way that the Aquilizans think about their practice. “There’s no such thing as a formula,” Isabel says. “It’s always a dark room and you discover what’s inside, which is exciting, that is art-making.” 

By GWEN BAUTISTA. Photographs by LLOYD RAMOS.