ABOUT

  

JUSTIN                    
ENRICO        
LEGASPI

I acknowledge the Bunurong and Wadawurrung Peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which I live and create. Their art and cultural practices have thrived for millennia, and continue to live and flourish on this land today. I pay my respects to their ancestors and Elders past, present, and emerging, and to all First Nations people. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
Justin Enrico Legaspi is a Filipino-Australian interdisciplinary artist, writer and youth advocate based in the Western suburbs of Naarm/Melbourne.
        Currently an artist-in-residence at The Substation, Legaspi’s practice moves between pop culture and diasporic contexts. Working across new media, sculpture, installation, food and writing, he draws upon personal, familial, generational and digital experiences, adopting aeshetics and materials across places and time. His work enshrines the ordinary to better understand the status quo, dwelling on its bittersweet comforts and idealisations.
        Mentored and developing work through programs by Next Wave and KINGS Artist-Run, Legaspi’s youth-facing practice is concerned with visibility, access and participation in the arts. His creative responses use humour, sincerity and elements borrowed from fandom and participatory culture as educational approaches, subverting who gets to feel ‘in the know’ within the white cube.
        He is also an associate journalist for Good News West by youth-led organisation, YLab, writing about the arts in Naarm’s West.
        In 2025, Legaspi won the National Still Life Award, Acquisitive Prize for his photogrammetric series Bahay and was a finalist for the Emerging Artist Award at Fortyfivedownstairs.

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