Stephanie Syjuco (b. 1974 Manila, Philippines; Lives and works in San Francisco, CA) works primarily in sculpture, installation and photography, leveraging open-source systems, shareware logic and flows of capital to create friction between high ideals and everyday materials.
Read MoreHer conceptual craft practice translates digital content and process into physical experience, often with an active public component that invites viewers to participate as producers or distributors. Syjuco's multimedia social practice ties pedagogy and research to study and highlight the tension between the authentic and the counterfeit across a wide range of media, thus problematising long-held assumptions about history, race, and labour. 'Many of my projects involve public participation to create or build the final work,' Syjuco explains. 'I see this collective effort as both a socially and politically engaged process because it encourages people to take agency in creating something together, as opposed to being a passive observer of an artwork.'
Previous projects include starting a global collaboration with crochet crafters to counterfeit high-end consumer goods; presenting a parasitic art counterfeiting event, COPYSTAND: An Autonomous Manufacturing Zone at Frieze Projects, London (2009); and Shadowshop, an alternative vending outlet embedded at SFMOMA that explored how artists navigate the production, consumption and dissemination of their own work (2010-11).
In 2016, Syjuco was commissioned by Art in America to illustrate an article on virtual reality museum tours, for which she produced eight 3D captures of American colonial displays at the de Young Museum and used glitches to emphasize the hidden histories of these artworks and artefacts.
Text courtesy Ryan Lee Gallery
