Critical Interventions: Talking Back to the Archive

Visual artist and UC Berkeley Professor Stephanie Syjuco presents, "Critical Interventions: Talking Back to the Archive," a lecture exploring her research-driven practice.

From Professor Syjuco's artist statement:

"My work recycles, copies, resuscitates, warps, reframes, rips off, plunders, and hinges on existing forms and historical archives because the past is still unfinished business. I work in large-scale installation, utilizing photo and image-based processes to create densely layered works that are a result of deep research and archival investigation.

By examining institutional, governmental, and museum archives and collections, I focus on how power manifests in visible and invisible ways—from American colonial regimes to overseas authoritarian legacies, in an attempt to “talk back” to the official narrative. At stake for me is how to form an alternative to a codified, exclusionary definition of nationhood and citizenship.

My recent projects use digital imaging processes (green screen backdrops, Photoshop filters, pixelation, and other manipulated techniques), pairing them with meticulous hand-crafted analog formats (textiles, sculptural displays, large format paper collage prints, outmoded reproduction methods) in an attempt to create productive frictions across different time periods. In some projects, I actively conceal or remove the subject as a way to shift the viewer’s focus back on to structures of power—for example, to expose the museum display apparatus (Blind Spot (Artifacts), 2025), or to protect an individual from identification (Total Transparency (Portrait of N), 2018).

I want my work to act as a catalyst—a way to reframe what has come before so we can envision ourselves out of what has been defined as settled history."

Professor Syjuco's lecture is part of a 4-day residency at Duke focused on justice, visibility, and power in archival collections. While on campus, she'll visit classes, present workshops for students, meet with faculty, staff and community members, and explore Duke's archival collections, culminating in this public lecture open to all.

There will be time for Q & A and a reception will follow the talk.