installation view of Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan, Epitaph, 2020, forged metal and wood, edition of 19, dimensions variable
Yavuz Gallery presents Isabel & Alfredo Aquilizan in a benefit project titled Forge on view at our Singapore gallery for eight days only.
Forge (2020) consists of 19 sculptural works. It engages with Pandayan; the Filipino practice of blade-making that has existed before the colonisation of the Philippines. Like an heirloom, the craft is passed to younger generations of families who have a panday (blacksmith). Now, it is a waning industry due to the processes of globalisation. Paradoxically, global interconnections also maintain the vitality of pandayan in the small town of Magdalena, Philippines. Just a few hours East from the artists’ home-base Los Baños in Laguna, Philippines, is where a panday works and lives with his two kids and his wife. Learning from YouTube videos, NC is self-taught, repairing and forging bolos (machetes) for the local farmers of Magdalena and neighbouring villages. As younger generations of Magdalena watch on, their yearning to learn grows.
In Forge, Isabel & Alfredo Aquilizan and Yavuz Gallery are raising funds to create a pandayan workshop in Magdalena; among other upcoming community-based projects organised by Fruitjuice Factori Studio in collaboration with NC and the locals of Magdalena. The Fruitjuice Factori Studio is a Philippines-based artist collective composed of Isabel & Alfredo Aquilizan and their five adult children, that create artworks using humble objects and reused materials to explore the meaning of home, memory, and diaspora.
The project represents a new juncture of their community-based work in the time of a global pandemic. The mask is used as a signifier of ever-changing landscapes and experiences of social interaction and identity. This reflection simultaneously articulates the Aquilizan’s re-location from collaboration with communities in a transnational space, to their re-engagement with localised spheres of knowledge sharing within their country of origin. Although they have found themselves in a gridlock in these times, a sense of settlement has facilitated a new co-production of social spaces in which stories are exchanged. For in this space, Forge seeks to amplify the stories that take root in the community’s strength, skill and resilience. Perhaps, amalgamating in the construction of a productive social space.
Venue: Yavuz Gallery, Gillman Barracks
9 Lock Road, #02-23, Singapore 108937
When: 24 Oct - 1 Nov 2020,
By: Ames Yavuz
