AUSTIN, TX.- Syjuco, a Filipino‑American artist known for research‑driven installations and tactical public projects, has long interrogated how institutions frame racialized bodies. “I do not make work about Filipino identity; I make work about the white gaze, and those are two totally different things,” she notes early in the book. That uncompromising stance anchors a 320‑page volume published by Radius Books in May 2024. It gathers nearly three decades of practice alongside newly commissioned essays and extensive visual documentation.

The editorial team—including writers Astria Suparak, Carmen Winant, Pio Abad, Wendy Red Star, and others—sets Syjuco’s projects against wider debates on empire, museum anthropology, and activist image‑making. Their multiple perspectives keep the tone discursive rather than celebratory, allowing readers to weigh evidence instead of accepting a single thesis.

True to its title, The Unruly Archive refuses linear browsing. Pages of varying widths and paper stocks simulate riffling through misfiled ephemera, while die‑cut dividers mimic manila folders labeled “Visual Research Misc.” Designers David Chickey and Nick Larsen avoid slick finishes; matte ink, visible registration marks, and the occasional photocopy smear foreground the labor of reproduction.

Each major artwork receives a mini‑archive: full‑bleed installation shots, studio process snapshots, and reproduced source images occupy different paper layers so that references literally underlie finished pieces. The physicality rewards slow reading; turning a half‑page overlay to reveal a colonial postcard beneath mirrors Syjuco’s conceptual excavations.

Syjuco’s art often weaponizes mimicry—digitally printed counterfeit fabrics, museum display props, or crowdsourced protest banners—to expose institutional power. The monograph tracks this strategy from early DIY craftivism to recent chroma‑key installations critiquing algorithmic vision. Essays highlight how she re‑stages ethnographic photographs with friends posing behind green screens, collapsing past and present acts of capture.

Particularly compelling is Astria Suparak’s contribution dissecting Syjuco’s appropriation of U.S. government color charts used to classify skin during the Philippine‑American War. The essay situates these swatches within today’s machine‑learning bias discourse, underlining the artist’s argument that “metadata can be a weapon disguised as description.” Although some readers may crave more technical detail about fabrication methods, the analytic depth and generous footnoting compensate.

Interwoven “field notes” authored by Syjuco function like marginalia: anecdotal reflections on residency archives, customs inspections, or sewing tutorials punctuate the scholarship with first‑person urgency. This voice prevents the book from ossifying into an academic object; it reminds us that archives are lived terrains, not inert boxes awaiting passive viewership.

The Unruly Archive excels at making visible the invisible frameworks shaping how cultural narratives circulate. Its layered design embodies the thesis that context should never be flattened for convenience. For curators, librarians, educators, and students grappling with decolonizing collections, the volume offers both cautionary tales and practical models—such as open‑source exhibition checklists and Creative Commons templates reproduced in an appendix.

The positivity of this review stems from the book’s clarity of purpose and generous transparency. Yet it is not hagiographic. A tighter chronology would have clarified how Syjuco’s material experiments evolve; the sprawling, non‑linear sequence occasionally obscures cause and effect. Likewise, the reliance on English‑language commentary risks reproducing the linguistic hierarchies the artist critiques. These are quibbles, not deal‑breakers.

Measured, provocative, and impeccably produced, Stephanie Syjuco: The Unruly Archive is more than a survey; it is a portable study center challenging readers to rethink how knowledge is filed, found, and weaponized. Scholars of visual culture will appreciate the rigorous documentation, while practitioners will find actionable prompts embedded in the margins. Anyone interested in the afterlives of colonial imagery will return to its unruly pages again and again, discovering fresh resonances with each pass.