Stephanie Syjuco
Crumpled Calibration 4, 2021
Archival pigment inkjet
16 x 21 inches (40.5 x 53.2 cm)
Edition of 5, plus 2APs
opening bid: $5,000
buy it now: $8,500
Stephanie Syjuco examines how the camera records and constructs American histories. Mining the archives of major US institutions, Syjuco engages with photographs and objects to reframe our view, using photographic tools such as color-calibration charts (like the one seen in this work), Photoshop applications, and even her own hands, which gently intervene in images. By revealing the blind spots, holes, and fragments of these collections, she examines the ways photography, anthropology, and national archives produce and proliferate images of exclusion and cultural Othering. Using techniques of layering, blocking, digital manipulation, pixelating, blowing up, and taping together, the artist’s work ultimately seeks to “talk back” to the archive and find agency in challenging its images.
Born in the Philippines in 1974, Stephanie Syjuco received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Walker Art Center, The 12th Havana Bienal, and The 2015 Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan), among others. A long-time educator, she is an Associate Professor in Sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Oakland, California.
Work courtesy of the artist and Ryan Lee Gallery.
