Stephanie Syjuco

Stephanie Syjuco (b. 1974 Manila, Philippines) 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. Her 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 problematizing long-held assumptions about history, race, and labor. “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.”

Submitted by RYAN LEE