In the Bay Area's vibrant contemporary art scene, few artists are more accomplished than Stephanie Syjuco, who has been widely celebrated for her multidisciplinary practice for more than two decades. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other prestigious awards, Syjuco has exhibited her work to great acclaim at some of the world's leading art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York's Museum of Modern Art and SFMOMA. In addition to her nationally-renowned artistic practice, Syjuco is also a longtime professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Art Practice. It is on the Berkeley campus that she has recently been hard at work on her largest project to date: a massive, site-specific installation for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).
Courtesy of BAMPFA/Daria Lugina
Inaugurated earlier this week, Present Tense (Roll Call) occupies the entirety of BAMPFA's Art Wall, a 63-by-30-foot space adjacent to the museum's entrance. Syjuco has spent the past two weeks filling this gigantic canvas with a text-based art installation that reflects her longstanding interest in the present-day relevance of historical archives. In this case, Syjuco has chosen to direct that lens onto teaching and learning during fraught times, and Berkeley's own history of radical approaches to education, inspired by her own dual role as an artist and educator working on one of America's most historically progressive university campuses.
"I don't think I would have made this work anywhere else," said Syjuco. "I was thinking about my colleagues in the Art Practice Department. I was thinking about the students that I teach and mentor, and the questions that we ask each other about the place of public education right now in a world that's quickly privatizing, and the public resources that we are all attempting to steward."
Courtesy
These reflections are vividly illustrated in Present Tense (Roll Call) as a sprawling collage of enlarged black-and-white scans of book spines and index pages from critical texts and reproductions from the university's libraries and collections. In developing her initial concept, Syjuco spent time at the Ethnic Studies Library and Bancroft Library, unearthing pedagogical texts and activist records from the 1960s and '70s - a period when Berkeley was abuzz with radical social activism, ranging from the Free Speech Movement to the Third World Liberation Front. Because these movements are already so familiar to the Berkeley community, Syjuco tried to approach them with a fresh perspective.
"I was trying to find documents that could augment the conversation and not present images that we're already familiar with," said Syjuco. "Berkeley is obviously very proud of the Free Speech Movement, but it's also been condensed into a couple iconic images, rendering it abstract to students and the general public. When I was doing research, I decided to use the Ethnic Studies Library, which holds records that are specifically different from the Bancroft Library's collection."
"I looked at a progress report printed in 1969 during the Third World Liberation strike's demand for cultural representation in education. The student organizers had just started making an impact with the university administration. There was a hopefulness in this document - a sense of promise," said Syjuco. "By including it in the artwork, I hope people become curious about 'Well, what did happen to these demands?' Some of the educational changes cited by the student organizers didn't actually come to fruition and many compromises were made. By including that document in the artwork, I wanted to show that there are moments when possibilities open up - but whether or not they get followed through on is another matter."
Syjuco noted that Present Tense (Roll Call) is "definitely not a comprehensive look at the history of Berkeley," but instead a "snapshot" of issues and ideas that have influenced the university's intellectual trajectory, as well as her own as an artist and teacher. A key touchstone in her early research was the legacy of Chiura Obata, a Japanese American professor in Berkeley's art practice department, who famously founded an art school inside the confines of a Japanese internment camp during World War II - an act of radical pedagogy that resonated with Syjuco's own interests.
Courtesy of BAMPFA/Daria Lugina
"As a professor who is literally teaching in Obata's department, as an Asian American professor, there's a resonance I am creating across decades, even though Obata and I did not overlap at the same time," said Syjuco, who was born in the Philippines. For Present Tense (Roll Call), she included an image of Obata sourced from the archives of the Smithsonian, a museum that happens to hold Syjuco's own work in its collection as well.
While Berkeley's history of protest culture is the nominal subject of Present Tense (Roll Call), it's impossible to look at the work and not think about 2025, a year when the contested politics of higher education have roared back into the headlines. Amid recent attacks on ethnic studies, diversity programs and vulnerable communities, much of the text that Syjuco has chosen to feature in her mural - where words like "immigration" and "transgender" quite literally loom large - calls these struggles immediately to the viewer's mind. While these contemporary resonances were certainly on Syjuco's own mind as well, she sees the piece as more of an invitation to dialogue, especially about the role of teaching and learning in artistic and civic spaces. To that end, she invited dozens of other artist-educators from around the country to nominate what they consider important teaching texts, and included these works on the Art Wall.
"It's a symbolic act of inclusion," said Syjuco. "And it helps draw in not just my own views on what I think is important to teach today, but a conversation among artist-teachers around the country."
"As we move forward in our professions as educators, we have to respond to the scenarios with which we are confronted," she continued. "It's important to remember this, because as we move forward over the next few years, we're going to have to stand strong in maintaining our values."
"Present Tense (Roll Call)" will be on view at BAMPFA through June 28, 2026.
