Image: Alfredo and Isabel AQUILIZAN, Refuge: Project: Another Country 2012 wood and cardboard transport boxes QUT Art Collection. Purchased 2013
The work is comprised of wood and cardboard from transport boxes and measures approximately 1.3 metres tall by 1.2 metres wide with a depth of 16 centimetres. The work is displayed on a black plinth low to the floor and can viewed from both sides.
A narrow, long boat similar to a canoe or kayak forms the base of this sculpture. Working from left to right the entire surface of the boat is filled with a collection of tiny makeshift houses, matchbox in size, and each clamouring for space, tightly jammed in side-by-side and stacking one upon the other to form a tall triangular shape.
The structures are coloured a dirty, rusty brown and there is a sense of the site being polluted with every inch of the sculpture tarnished in this same dirty brown shade. Precariously stacked, the homes have congregated and curved rooves made to resemble tin sheet metal and reminiscent of the found, recycled and collected materials used to build temporary housing in transient locations like refugee camps and shanty towns. Tiny stick ladders are located throughout the work providing means to connect the shelters on the lower levels with those in the upper levels above.
Vertical cardboard poles work their way up the left- and right-hand sides of the sculpture, jutting out from the rooves and acting as tele communication towers. At the top of the work sits a satellite dish and a tall pole with the distinctive triangular shape of a flag stiffly pointing out.
The artists explain, “the use of cardboard goes back to our childhood memories, where family members who left the Philippines to work overseas would send cardboard boxes called balikbayan (returning home) boxes, filled with items for their family back home. In the Philippines, cardboard is a valuable material; you buy it by the kilo and people earn money from it. It can become the wall of a house, a makeshift space, or a bed. It stood out in our memories, and when we left the Philippines, we used cardboard to move our own household. Project: Another Country corresponded with our move to Australia, referencing the in-between space that opens when you leave home. You’re always moving in that middle ground.”