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Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan
ArtWay Visual Meditation 15 December 2024
Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan: Pillars: Project Another Country
Refuge for Pilgrims
By Alexandra Jean Davison
Three massive ships hang suspended upside down from the atrium of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in New Zealand. Hundreds of housing structures climb and cling to one another outward from the hull, creating a zany, surrealistic quality as if MC Escher had fabricated a three-dimensional sculpture in the spirit of his Relativity (1953). Yet this triptych installation titled Pillars: Project Another Country, 2018, is far from coldly mathematical like the work of Escher. Artists and husband-and-wife team Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan conceived this work as an invitation to inhabit conversations of migration experiences and the complexities of relocation; exploring ideas about what family is and what makes a place home.
The Aquilizans understand the experience of displacement having emigrated from the Philippines to Australia. They shared in interviews that they no longer feel “at home” when they visit the land of their birth; a common dissonance for those who have crossed identity thresholds into a new country. From Pillar to Post is the result of an experimental community project where workshop volunteers collaborated with the artists to sculpt “homes” out of cardboard boxes, a material known for being cheap, dispensable, and associated with relocation.
Advent was drawing near, with Christmas decorations out in full force around the city, when I stood beneath these ships that spiraled downward to greet gallery visitors below. As I gazed at these ships suspended like a constellation in the night sky, the Christmas carol I Saw Three Ships came to me and this work has resonated with me every Advent and Christmas since:
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning
O they sailed into Bethlehem
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day
O they sailed into Bethlehem
On Christmas Day in the morning
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day
O they sailed into Bethlehem
On Christmas Day in the morning
This carol, though its origins are unclear, has come to be associated with Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day. The magi or wise men from the East in Matthew’s Gospel are traditionally thought to have ridden to Bethlehem on camels which were known as “ships in the desert.” These men fulfilled a significant advisory role in government and were known as kingmakers throughout Persia. It is possible that they studied the Messianic passages in the Jewish Scriptures, for example in Isaiah, Micah, or Daniel. The magi were not Jews. They were gentiles from pagan nations, yet they stated their purpose as seeking the king of the Jews, and that they had “come to worship him.”
When we give gifts, we typically offer something in context to the purpose or occasion for the gift, our relationship to the other and something of the recipient’s nature or identity (either casually or significantly). When they found Mary and the Christ Child, they gave treasures as gifts which prophetically proclaimed Christ as the Divine King and Savior: gold proclaims his royalty, frankincense his divinity, and myrrh his sacrificial death for the salvation of the world.
I imagine that when the magi returned to their origins, home no longer felt quite the same, because they did not return as the same men who set out to begin with. They had not only come face to face with the king of the Jews, but with the Son of God. Quite possibly, they felt a sense of displacement for the rest of their lives: Anyone who has encountered Jesus Christ and come to worship him, will have undergone a transference of allegiance from an earthly kingdom to the heavenly kingdom of God.
It is no surprise then if we as Christians experience alienation from a world that does not recognize its true king. Yet, at the same time, the incarnation of Christ serves as the vanguard for Christians seeking a sense of place in the world. Because the Son of God was sent by the Father, he understands the lived experience of being at home wherever he travelled yet not truly belonging to a place or people. We see in the gospels his discord with earthly relatives and earthly powers. His own people did not recognize him for who he was!
But thanks be to God, he has turned everything that we thought we knew upside down. Through Jesus Christ, God has given us himself and poured out the Holy Spirit. Our new relationship with God and one another extends beyond all borders. We are no longer a law unto ourselves according to the way of the world, but have become citizens of Heaven. Regardless of language, culture or geography, believers worldwide are marked with unity in Christ: “I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people.” (Romans 9:25) Radical generosity and sacrifice are the pillars of our placemaking on earth and become the treasures that we present to God. The gospel upends our reality, and can look as strange as upside-down ships carrying a new people into a new country. During Advent we look back to Christ’s coming to us in Bethlehem, but we also look ahead to his coming in glory, and he will be with his people in his kingdom.
And all the bells on earth shall ring
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day
And all the bells on earth shall ring
On Christmas Day in the morning
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day
And all the bells on earth shall ring
On Christmas Day in the morning
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning
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Exhibition: Pillars: Project Another Country by artists Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan. © Install views courtesy of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2019. https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/whats-on/exhibition/pillars-project-another-country
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan is a Filipino artist. He draws, paints, sculpts, mixes media, does assemblages, and initiates installation projects. His work draws on memory of home and country. He earned his fine arts degree from the Philippine Women’s University in 1986 and his master’s from the Polytechnic University in Norwich, England. He is currently pursuing his doctorate at the Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. Together with wife Isabel, he has exhibited at biennales/triennials like Venice, Sydney, and Singapore and has been commissioned by the Tate Liverpool among others. He taught at the Philippine High School for the Arts and the University of the Philippines at Los Baños.
Isabel Aquilizan is a teacher and artist of the performing arts. She is a director and actress. Her engagement with the process of performance and its inherent collaborative possibilities has led her to work with her husband in installations that cross gaps between media and distances. Her role as a mother of five children enables her to intervene in recreating the art of installation as home or habitat that is sustained by housekeeping, child rearing, nurturing, and the collecting of memories. She completed her degree in Communication Arts at the Assumption in 1986 and taught at the Philippine High School for the Arts.
Alexandra Jean Davison is an artist and the director for Culture Care, a ministry department of Artists in Christian Testimony International (A.C.T. Intl.). Her art, writings and work equip churches to show Christ in hospitable explorations of faith, imagination, and artistry. She received her M.Div in Apologetics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina. She then went on to receive a M.Litt in Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. She lives with her husband and two children in Maastricht, Netherlands. For more information, see www.culturecarerdu.com
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