Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan, Manuel Ocampo, Dominic Mangila
The Columns Gallery Singapore gathers works by Dominic Mangila, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, and Manuel Ocampo in a presentation that unfolds as an afterimage rather than a conclusion. Emerging from the resonant field of Isang Dipang Langit, this exhibition is not a return but a quiet continuation, where memory lingers, materials carry lived histories, and gestures remain suspended between departure and becoming.
Each artist moves through a distinct formal language, yet all are attuned to the fragile architectures of displacement, accumulation, and symbolic charge. Mangila’s surfaces breathe with measured restraint. The Aquilizans assemble worlds from fragments of passage and home. Ocampo’s imagery pulses with psychic and cultural tension. Together, the works extend the poetic horizon first opened by Isang Dipang Langit, inviting viewers into a space where time folds gently and meaning remains in motion.
Internationally-acclaimed husband-and-wife duo Alfredo Aquilizan (b.1962- Philippines) and Isabel Aquilizan (b.1965- Philippines) approach their collaborative practice from the lens of their own personal experiences of global movement in relation to family and home. In doing so, they create highly detailed installations and sculptures that spark conversations around ideas of identity, migration, journey and displacement. Often using everyday, nontraditional materials, they draw attention to the transient nature of global movement, settlement and community, to create objects that serve as metaphors for everyday human life.
Arrivals and Departures: Project Another Country refers to an ongoing, collaborative art project by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, exploring themes of migration, displacement, identity. In their Arrivals and departures multi-storey towers of dense bricolage homes are piled on top of each other in chaotic constructions. Aquilizan’s houses are lively, with bird boxes, antennas and other signs of life. Each building is on a luggage trolleys, ready to move to a new location.
Dominic Mangila(b.1978- Philippines)’s paintings often reinterpret historic imagery and labor scenes to confront the intersections of colonial memory, diaspora, and social class. The “Manong Generation” refers to the first major wave of young, mostly single Filipino men who immigrated to the United States. “Manong,” an Ilocano term for “older brother,” was used affectionately to describe these laborers who formed the backbone of agricultural, salmon canning, and hospitality industries. To depict the “Manong Generation” for the exhibition at The Columns, Dominic Mangila drew from a historical photograph taken in Imperial Valley, California.
His paintings draw from archival photographs depicting Filipino shrimp farmers in Louisiana in the 1950s. The works reference the traditional “Shrimp Dance,” a method introduced by early Filipino settlers in which shrimp were dried in the sun and processed by walking over them to separate the shells from the meat, producing preserved dried shrimp.
Manuel Ocampo (b.1965- Philippines) is known for his frequent and strategic stylistic drifts in response to new contexts and subject matter. His shows are often constructed around contradictory tendencies, elaborating discrepancies between what a painting appears to be and how it behaves in relation to the structures that legitimate its appearance. He always embraces sudden shifts of style and emphasis. He paints, but doubt is created as to whether any particular medium is the solution.
The Critic series confronts the legacy of Western High Modernist abstraction by questioning its claims to the sublime and monumental space. Through the figure of a migratory duck, the artist transforms abstract “voids” into physical, fluid gestures that reflect experiences of displacement and cultural hybridity. Embracing chance and disruption, the works ask who defines artistic value in a world shaped by movement and shifting identities.
The Columns Gallery Singapore gathers works by Dominic Mangila, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, and Manuel Ocampo in a presentation that unfolds as an afterimage rather than a conclusion. Emerging from the resonant field of Isang Dipang Langit, this exhibition is not a return but a quiet continuation, where memory lingers, materials carry lived histories, and gestures remain suspended between departure and becoming.
Each artist moves through a distinct formal language, yet all are attuned to the fragile architectures of displacement, accumulation, and symbolic charge. Mangila’s surfaces breathe with measured restraint. The Aquilizans assemble worlds from fragments of passage and home. Ocampo’s imagery pulses with psychic and cultural tension. Together, the works extend the poetic horizon first opened by Isang Dipang Langit, inviting viewers into a space where time folds gently and meaning remains in motion.
Internationally-acclaimed husband-and-wife duo Alfredo Aquilizan (b.1962- Philippines) and Isabel Aquilizan (b.1965- Philippines) approach their collaborative practice from the lens of their own personal experiences of global movement in relation to family and home. In doing so, they create highly detailed installations and sculptures that spark conversations around ideas of identity, migration, journey and displacement. Often using everyday, nontraditional materials, they draw attention to the transient nature of global movement, settlement and community, to create objects that serve as metaphors for everyday human life.
Arrivals and Departures: Project Another Country refers to an ongoing, collaborative art project by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, exploring themes of migration, displacement, identity. In their Arrivals and departures multi-storey towers of dense bricolage homes are piled on top of each other in chaotic constructions. Aquilizan’s houses are lively, with bird boxes, antennas and other signs of life. Each building is on a luggage trolleys, ready to move to a new location.
Dominic Mangila(b.1978- Philippines)’s paintings often reinterpret historic imagery and labor scenes to confront the intersections of colonial memory, diaspora, and social class. The “Manong Generation” refers to the first major wave of young, mostly single Filipino men who immigrated to the United States. “Manong,” an Ilocano term for “older brother,” was used affectionately to describe these laborers who formed the backbone of agricultural, salmon canning, and hospitality industries. To depict the “Manong Generation” for the exhibition at The Columns, Dominic Mangila drew from a historical photograph taken in Imperial Valley, California.
His paintings draw from archival photographs depicting Filipino shrimp farmers in Louisiana in the 1950s. The works reference the traditional “Shrimp Dance,” a method introduced by early Filipino settlers in which shrimp were dried in the sun and processed by walking over them to separate the shells from the meat, producing preserved dried shrimp.
Manuel Ocampo (b.1965- Philippines) is known for his frequent and strategic stylistic drifts in response to new contexts and subject matter. His shows are often constructed around contradictory tendencies, elaborating discrepancies between what a painting appears to be and how it behaves in relation to the structures that legitimate its appearance. He always embraces sudden shifts of style and emphasis. He paints, but doubt is created as to whether any particular medium is the solution.
The Critic series confronts the legacy of Western High Modernist abstraction by questioning its claims to the sublime and monumental space. Through the figure of a migratory duck, the artist transforms abstract “voids” into physical, fluid gestures that reflect experiences of displacement and cultural hybridity. Embracing chance and disruption, the works ask who defines artistic value in a world shaped by movement and shifting identities.