From James Harris, where her work is on view till May 2:
Stephanie Syjuco uses the tactics of bootlegging, reappropriation, and fictional fabrications to address issues of cultural biography, labor, and economic globalization…She constructed small cut-out dioramas taken from tourist photographs of the Philippines and placed them conspicuously throughout her apartment. She then photographed her living space as a personal travelogue….By examining and constructing objects with fictional identities and histories, the artist reveals a larger truth: that we constantly invent narratives about ourselves and about others.
She’s got it all – identity politics, race, the global economy, the shifting mirage of home base and a creative use of multiple media.
As Charles Mudede wrote about her 2005 exhibit at James Harris, these issues have legs. He praises her for not being
dazzled by the phantasmagoria of planetary capitalism but instead uses its physical and visual commodities as the very material (and subject) of her sculptures, photographs, and media installation.
I’d like to know who’s dazzled by that phantasmagoria, besides the heads of international corporations, none of whom are quite as confident as they once were, seeing that global capitalism is on the ropes.
Back to the art. It’s deeply illustrative of its content, which makes it feel like homework. Mudede appears to be in love with the artist’s politics. Art critics can be swayed by underdog efforts, but art doesn’t care. For its own reasons, it favors or ignores lunatics in asylums and painters paid by the court. All the good will in the world cannot turn a weak form into a strong one. I do not claim that Syjuco will never get to the genuine, just that she’s isn’t there yet.
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