Art Wall / Stephanie Syjuco: Present Tense (Roll Call)

August 13, 2025–June 28, 2026

Debuting her largest wall installation to date, artist Stephanie Syjuco (b. 1974, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Oakland) presents Present Tense (Roll Call). Referencing the classroom routine of announcing one’s presence, the exhibition explores radical pedagogy in the politics of education. Syjuco’s practice spans from handcrafted textiles to archival excavations, interrogating how photography and archives shape racialized narratives of being and belonging.

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Stephanie Syjuco: Study for Present Tense (Roll Call) , 2025; courtesy of the artist.

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Art Wall / Stephanie Syjuco: Present Tense (Roll Call)

August 13, 2025–June 28, 2026

For this exhibition, Syjuco, who has taught at UC Berkeley since 2013, reflected on her role as an educator while drawing from the Bancroft Library and the Ethnic Studies Library, engaging with their extensive holdings on student activism and research by marginalized communities. As part of the artist’s process, she collaborated with multiple participants, inviting educators nationwide to contribute pedagogical materials, thus reinforcing the...

Present Tense (Roll Call) unfolds as a sprawling visual field of text and imagery, which uses documents referencing the first ethnic studies programs in the United States, including UC Berkeley’s program, born in the late 1960s. With this project, Syjuco urgently responds to the broad backlash against and recent legislative attacks on ethnic studies, book bans, and the defunding and removal of diversity programs. She transformed ordinary didactic materials into a layered constellation of fragmented and reassembled information. Her photographic approach reenacts archival parsing, selectively sharpening elements while letting others fade into illegibility, revealing how knowledge is precariously preserved, erased, and fiercely contested. By exposing the logic and limits of archives, Syjuco invites viewers to reconsider the tension through which history—and its daily presence—is recalled, constructed, and controlled.

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Art Wall / Stephanie Syjuco: Present Tense (Roll Call) is curated by Matthew Villar Miranda, Curatorial Associate.

The Art Wall is made possible by major funding from Frances Hellman and Warren Breslau.

Art Wall / Stephanie Syjuco: Present Tense (Roll Call)

August 13, 2025–June 28, 2026

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Artist's Talk and Conversation: Stephanie Syjuco and Matthew Villar Miranda

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