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58 Earth and Elsewhere | Contemporary Works from the Collection
Earth and Elsewhere | Contemporary Works from the Collection 59
Jose Legaspi
/ The Philippines b.1959
/
Phlegm
(detail) 2000–02
/ Charcoal and chalk on paper
/ 1007 sheets: 22.9 x 30.5cm (each, approx.); installed size variable
/
Acc. 2002.145a–
/ Purchased 2002. Queensland Art Gallery Functions Reserve Fund
Jose Legasp i
Phlegm
2000–02
Phlegm
uses a grid of 1007 charcoal drawings to construct a
narrative of social and sexual trauma. The title seems apposite
for a work so claustrophobic and dispiriting, but ‘phlegm’ has
other meanings too — meanings that speak of inscrutability,
self‑possession, detachment. The drawings feature small,
lost boys; strange other-worldly couples who reach for
connection; family groups in lonely rooms. Pain is offset by
the hieratic formality of the compositions; by the use of deep,
unusual colours that penetrate the otherwise overwhelming
gradations of grey; and by beguiling, opaque surfaces.
Legaspi reveals a painful and tragic complicity of perpetrators
and victims. He shows us that the human body is not just an
object of desire, but also the site of agony and death. Despite its
confronting content, this message is delivered in the form of
a lament, and Legaspi hints at the prospect of a faint utopian
glimmer at the end of the tunnel.