Balikbayan Boxes in Hermés: Filipino Artists Take Over Windows of Shanghai Luxury House

(SPOT.ph) This autumn at the flagship Hermès Maison in Shanghai, China, shoppers and passersby alike will look into the shop windows and find not just clothes and handmade leather bags but also balikbayan boxes. They’re the cardboard installations by Filipino artist couple Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan whom the luxury house have commissioned to create the window pieces for the Maison, one of only six in the world and more a cultural establishment than a regular Hermès store.

Entitled “Portals: The Passage of Time,” the Aquilizans created stacked alcoves that serve not only as functional shelves that hold space for merchandise but contain the idea of moments in time. “Each window represents a different period or moment, but the boundaries between periods are deliberately unclear. Time is presented as a concept rather than simply a measurement used to track change,” the couple shared in a talk during the launch of the installation work.

“Portals: The Passage of Time” is a site-specific work, and took inspiration from the very structure that houses the Maison: an early 20th-century brick mansion (it has a lounge bar inside and its own exhibition space) located within Shanghai’s premier retail and residential area. “Site specificity for Hermès Maison Shanghai begins with the building itself—its distinctive brick colour, texture and architectural form. These inherent qualities became the starting point for our exploration, together with the season in which the work will be launched: autumn. Responding to these givens, we conceived a growing assemblage of cardboard boxes that playfully echoes the character of the building. The boxes appear to shift, stack and unfold in a continuous upward movement, gradually spreading towards the sky. The work creates a sense of lightness and spontaneity while remaining closely connected to the materiality, colour and architectural presence of the Maison.

“These cardboard structures also contrast with the very essence of permanence, becoming a symbolic meaning that talks about the ephemerality of time, the impermanence of structures, and the continuous evolution of ‘objects’.”

The Aquilizans are known for creating poetic vistas out of familiar objects. They’ve exhibited them, in various meaningful configurations, in different parts of the globe. In their hands, corrugated boxes, packaging tapes and various home fixtures hold the stories and sentiments of Filipinos anywhere in the world: of leaving the homeland, of resilience, of making do with what we have. Inside the Hermès Maison, their work also, surprisingly, find resonance in the luxury house’s reverence for heritage and history and for things made by human hands.

“Through this project, we share our perspective on Hermès’s rich tradition while exploring its enduring contribution to innovation and modernity. We create a space for reflection in which the methods and savoir-faire (mastery) of the past become an integral foundation for creativity and ingenuity. In this dialogue between heritage and the present, the past is not static, but a source of inspiration—a means of imagining new possibilities and adapting to a changing world.”

“Portals: The Passage of Time” by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan will be on view at Hermès Maison until November 12, 2026. Hermès Maison Shanghai is located at 217 Middle Huaihai Road, Shanghai.