Artist Stephanie Syjuco will discuss her exhibition on view at the Anderson Collection, White Balance/Color Cast, her artistic process, and how her work addresses belonging, racialization, difference, and visibility.

Utilizing the instruments of photography, video, installation, and social practice, artist and educator Stephanie Syjuco interrogates the construction of American history and foregrounds its colonial practices.  Her exhibition at the Anderson Collection, White Balance/Color Cast, derives from Syjuco’s established interest in photographic standards of imaging, color calibration charts, and photography’s suggestive powers. The commonly used term, white balance, refers to the process of removing an image’s color cast, shifting the image to what could be considered a more “neutral” or accurate representation. In Syjuco’s case, she uses these traditional imaging terms to question how photography and imaging standards—such as the quest for “correct” color—reflect deep seated biases, positioning whiteness as its center.

Kim Beil is the Associate Director of ITALIC (Immersion in the Arts: Living in Culture) program at Stanford  and an art historian who specializes in the history of photography. Her book, Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography, looks at 50 stylistic trends in the medium since the 19th century. Recently she’s written about photography and climate change for The Atlantic, a survey of street views for Cabinet, and a history of screenshots for the Believer. She also writes frequently about modern and contemporary art for Artforum, Art in America, BOMB, Photograph, and Sculpture magazines.