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

August 13, 2025–July 5, 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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Installation view, Art Wall / Stephanie Syjuco: Present Tense (Roll Call), 2025

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Sunday, July 12, 1 PM
The Future of Present Tense

Join us in the Art Lab to repurpose the printed materials freshly deinstalled from Stephanie Syjuco’s recent epic wall installation Present Tense (Roll Call). Expanding on the spirit of radical pedagogy central to her exhibition, Syjuco will offer examples of ways to transform this raw material into mini publications, encouraging participants to enjoy a free-form collage session with an exploded artwork.

BAMPFA

Included with admission.
Saturday, August 16, 1 PM
Artist's Talk and Conversation: Stephanie Syjuco and Matthew Villar Miranda

Artist Stephanie Syjuco (b. 1974, Manila, Philippines) is joined in conversation by Curatorial Associate Matthew Villar Miranda, who organized her new Art Wall project. Reflecting on radical pedagogy, the politics of education, and the construction of historical narratives, the conversation will explore how Syjuco transforms syllabi, indexes, and archival references into a visually immersive field of layered text and image.

BAMPFA

Past Films

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

August 13, 2025–July 5, 2026

The exhibition has been extended past its original closing date of June 28, 2026 and is now on view through July 5, 2026.

For this exhibition, Syjuco, a UC Berkeley professor 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 interconnected nature of knowledge production.

Present Tense (Roll Call) cascades across the wall 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 working through 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–July 5, 2026

Past Events

The Future of Present Tense

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

Past Films