Stephanie Syjuco (b. 1974, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Oakland, California) is known for her investigative, research-based practice encompassing photography, sculpture, and installation. Progressing from handmade and craft-inspired mediums to digital editing and archive excavations, her work employs open- source systems, shareware logic, and capital flows to scrutinize issues related to economies and empire. Initially exploring image-based processes and their implications in constructing racialized, exclusionary narratives of American history and citizenship, she has shifted her focus to the history- building and myth-making undertaken by Filipinos in their newfound independence. From critiquing images of American colonial anthropology in the Philippines, to investigating historical museum collections and shuttered newspaper archives, her projects attempt to reframe and “talk back” to the archive.

Syjuco received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship Award, a 2020 Tiffany Foundation Award, and a 2009 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award. She was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC in 2019-20 and is featured in the acclaimed PBS documentary series Art21: Art in the Twenty-First Century. 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 Getty Museum, The Walker Art Center, 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.

Photo of the artist by Kija Lucas