Courtesy of Stephanie Syjuco
Works in progress by Stephanie Syjuco (details), vinyl with dye sublimation prints on aluminum, 2021
There's a massive, new work coming to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art that promises an immersive, multimedia experience stretching across the first-floor galleries.
The Carter has commissioned Filipino-American artist Stephanie Syjuco to create a piece titled "Stephanie Syjuco: Double Vision" — a site-specific installation consisting of two murals, one on the north wall and the other on the south, that will extend over the gallery’s 50-foot-wide and 15-foot-tall walls with floor-to-ceiling fabric curtains for a 360-degree experience.
Syjuco will use digital editing to incorporate various works from the museum's collection, including those from artists like Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Remington, to create a piece meant to "highlight the constructed nature of historical narratives and reveal how these works and their presentation can perpetuate colonial lore," according to the Carter.
“Since its founding, the Carter has worked with living artists to present the best of American art and creativity across media,” museum executive director Andrew J. Walker said in a statement. “Syjuco’s probing multimedia practice explores national identity and institutional storytelling and finds a natural match in the Carter’s world-class collection of art of the American West. Her installation will offer a thoughtful critique of the ways in which artists have participated in developing mythologies of the West and ask us to consider the role of museums in preserving, presenting, and interpreting their artworks.”
The north wall mural will be a chromolithograph print of Bierstadt's The Storm in the Rocky Mountains (ca. 1868), doubled in what the Carter describes as a "Rorschach-esque" style. Then, on top of the mural, Syjuco will place her own images of White male hands from other Western works in the Carter's collection.
The south wall mural will feature another Bierstadt chromolithograph, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (1869), rendered in chroma key, the color associated with green screens used in filmmaking — "signaling space that will be manipulated in post-production," according to the Carter. "This vibrant tonal quality alludes to the pre-existing inhabitants, communities, and infrastructures that are 'edited out' in many narratives of Western settler expansion."
Syjuco will then mount large, printed photographs of Remington sculptures on top of the mural, staged to contain photographic and cataloging tools like color correction cards and measuring devices. According to the Carter, "The works will be intentionally captured from rear angles against a dark black background to remove them — literally and metaphorically — from their customary pedestals."
“Syjuco’s rigorous and responsive practice employs deep research, critical humor, and imaginative collaboration to investigate narratives of national and racial identity,” Kristen Gaylord, assistant curator of photographs, said in a statement. “Her site-specific work with the Carter collection will expose the multiple layers of ‘handling’ that contribute to an imperialist understanding of the West, from the artists’ fabrication of their artworks to the museum’s staging and presentation of them. By bringing attention to the conventions and assumptions implicit in each of these platforms, she challenges us to consider what stories we tell about our nation and what purposes and peoples they serve.”
The piece is expected to debut Jan. 15, 2022.
