Artwork Details
- Title
- Nationalities: Eleven Filipino women in native dress (from the American Counterpoint project, Alexander Alland, Sr., Photoprints, circa 1940, National Museum of American History, Archives Center, NMAH.AC.0204)
- Artist
- Date
- 2021
- Location
- Dimensions
- sheet: 38 3⁄4 × 56 in. (98.4 × 142.2 cm) framed: 41 3⁄4 × 59 1⁄2 × 2 1⁄4 in. (106 × 151.1 × 5.7 cm)
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase through the Catherine Walden Myer Fund, in partnership with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
- Mediums Description
- archival pigment inkjet
- Classifications
- Highlights
- Subjects
- Figure group — female
- Architecture Interior
- Object Number
- 2022.24.1
Artwork Description
In these works, Stephanie Syjuco manipulates archival material she photographed in 2019 as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the National Museum of American History. Her discoveries there led her to consider the role of such collections in shaping American identity and history.
The source for Nationalities was Alexander Alland's American Counterpoint photographs from the 1940s. Syjuco highlights her engagement with that material through the exposure of a photograph, shown in the box where she found it. The source for Reverse View: KKK was the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana. Wedged between the subjects "Ladies Clothes" and "Kitchen Appliances," Syjuco found a folder containing pamphlets, correspondence, and photographs recording Ku Klux Klan activities. Here, Syjuco's engagement is made visible through her blockage. By exposing the backsides of these materials, Syjuco provides a counternarrative to white supremacy.
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