
Stephanie Syjuco
Double Portrait (Available Light), 2021
Pigmented inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Baryta mounted on 3mm E-Panel
34 3/4 x 25 3/4 inches framed
65.4 x 88.3 cms framed
65.4 x 88.3 cms framed
Edition of 3
In “Double Portrait (Available Light),” the artist’s shadow makes an appearance, cast over an ethnographic image layered in glassine. Taken in the archives of the Missouri Historical Society in St....
In “Double Portrait (Available Light),” the artist’s shadow makes an appearance, cast over an ethnographic image layered in glassine. Taken in the archives of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, Syjuco uses original prints of imported Filipinos photographed at the 1904 World’s Fair by The Gerhard Sisters, but denies their legibility by covering over as well as hovering over the images until her own shadow takes center stage. A ghostly face of the original subject is barely discernible, becoming a double portrait of both Filipino-American artist and “native” Filipino ethnographic subject, bridged across over 100 years, and living under different realities. These images were taken with the available light offered in less-than-ideal circumstances: research rooms in which the artist could not remove or relight a work due to the limits of the archive itself.