Stephanie Syjuco

b. 1974

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Stephanie Syjuco creates large-scale spectacles of collected cultural objects, cumulative archives, and temporary vending installations, often with an active public component that invites viewers to directly participate as producers or distributors. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her projects leverage open-source systems, shareware logic, and flows of capital, creating frictions between high ideals and everyday materials. This has included starting a global collaborative project with crochet crafters to counterfeit high-end consumer goods; presenting a parasitic art counterfeiting event, "COPYSTAND: An Autonomous Manufacturing Zone" for Frieze Projects, London (2009); and “Shadowshop,” an alternative vending outlet embedded at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exploring the ways in which artists are navigating the production, consumption, and dissemination of their work (2010-11). A recent collaboration with the  FLACC Workplace for Visual Artists in Genk, Belgium, involved 3-D scanning of Belgian and Congolese antiquities to produce hybrid ceramic objects addressing the legacy of colonialism, empire, and trade routes.
 
Born in the Philippines, she received her M.F.A. from Stanford University and B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2014 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Award and a 2009 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art PS1 In New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The 12th Havana Biennale, The Bucharest Biennale, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ZKM Center for Art and Technology, Germany; Z33 Space for Contemporary Art, Belgium; Universal Studios Gallery Beijing; and the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, among others. She is an Assistant Professor in Sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley, and lives and works in San Francisco.