Jerome Kugan (b. 1975, Sabah) is a writer, musician and visual artist, whose Internalised series of works foregrounds a particular autobiographical aspect: his own HIV-positive status. Featuring a suite of ambiguous, androgynous figures whose gender identity has been deliberately erased – lacking obvious gender signifiers such as genitalia and hair – they are, in the artist’s words, “languid, open, revealing but still maintaining an air of dignity and mystery.” These figures are painted on seas of blood red, a reference of course to that essential bodily fluid, and also, more importantly, on the back of carton packages that antiretroviral drugs come in. After moving back to his hometown of Kota Kinabalu in 2017, the artist managed to befriend an HIV/AIDS outreach officer at the local hospital who managed to help him source the additional packaging that was needed. The titles of the individual paintings – “Ganymede”, “Atlas”, “Icarus” and “Apollo” – reference Greek mythology as representing archetypal characters. Ganymede, desired for his youthful beauty, is abducted by Zeus in the guise of an eagle to Mount Olympus, so that he could be made an immortal cupbearer to the Gods, in addition to becoming an object of Zeus’s lust. Atlas, as punishment for having chosen the losing side of history in the war between the Titans and Olympians, is burdened with carrying the heavens on his back for eternity. Icarus, the son of the inventor Daedalus, who fell into the sea after daring to fly too close to the sun with his artificial wings in defiance of his father’s advice. Apollo, the powerful and handsome god of the sun, whose charisma and brilliance barely hid an egoistic, jealous and sometimes vengeful personality. The fates of these characters and what they symbolize resonated with Kugan’s sense of the tragedy and irony of his own predicament.
