
Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan / Photograph: David Kelly / Image courtesy: Museum of Brisbane / View full image
We are excited about the work finally coming back home. This is where the work belongs: its permanent "Address".
Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan
Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan / Address: Project: Be-longing 2008 / Installed at PODO Museum, South Korea, 2022 / Personal belongings / 140 boxes: 50 x 50 x 50cm (each); installed dimensions variable / Proposed for the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Collection / c Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan / Image courtesy: The artists / View full image
We invite you to support the acquisition of Address: Project: Be‑longing 2008 by award-winning Filipino-born husband-and-wife team Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan. Address was created in Brisbane from the generous gifts of household items donated to the artists by the local community when they relocated to Brisbane in 2006.
Art and life combine in this immersive installation of 140 balikbayan boxes of personal belongings, shaped to resemble a four-sided dwelling with a single doorway. Central to migrant culture in the Philippines, the practical and symbolic balikbayan box — balik meaning ‘return’, and bayan meaning ‘home’ — is used by the nation’s many expatriates working abroad to send goods back to their families in the Philippines.
When Alfredo, Isabel and their five children arrived in Brisbane, they were met with overwhelming generosity. Friends, colleagues and members of the arts community offered household items to help them begin their new life in Australia; their decision to relocate to Brisbane was borne from their participation in the Gallery’s third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, held in 1999. Given the generosity of their community, the resulting abundance led to duplicate goods: several toasters, computers, and an excess of clothing; the 12 boxes they had brought with them soon multiplied. From this experience, the idea for Address emerged as a time capsule of the period, and as a portrait of both a family and a community.
By supporting the 2025 Appeal, you will help to ensure this important work, which has been exhibited around the world, returns to Brisbane to become part of the Gallery’s permanent Collection.
An immersive installation with a strong connection to Queensland, Address is timeless and universal; a family portrait that speaks more broadly to the experience of migration and the search for belonging
Chris Saines CNZM, Director, QAGOMA
Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan / Photograph: David Kelly / Image courtesy: Museum of Brisbane / View full image
We are excited about the work finally coming back home. This is where the work belongs: its permanent "Address".
Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan