A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive
The archive is a problematic site of investigation. It preserves history and functions as collective memory, yet it systematically excludes voices and narratives. It is framed as objective, yet it is constraining and biased. It protects fragments of the past, yet it often perpetuates violence against peoples and forms of knowledge.
A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive, examines the work of three contemporary artists who use speculative strategies to defy and transcend the logics of archives. Echoing what Saidiya Hartman has described as “working with and against the archive," the U.S.-based artists Firelei Báez, Gala Porras-Kim, and Stephanie Syjuco, probe the authority of the archive and seek to interrupt its hegemony. Born in the former Spanish colonies of the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and the Philippines, respectively, and working with archival materials housed in different types of cultural institutions—including maps in historical repositories, archeological objects in museum collections and ethnographic photographs in national archives—their practices devise strategies intended to disrupt, undermine, or neutralize archival violence.
Image Carousel with 4 slides
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Slide 1: Firelei Báez, "Untitled (New Chart of the Windward Passages)," 2020. Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas; 66 x 86 1/4 in (167.6 x 219.1 cm). Photograph by Phoebe d'Heurle; courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.
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Slide 2: Stephanie Syjuco, "Fragment: Military Officer (from Alexander Schadenberg photographs of the Philippines, circa 1881-1896, National Anthropology Archives, NAA.PhotoLot.15)," 2021. Archival pigment inkjet print; 52 1/2 x 40 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist; RYAN LEE Gallery, NY; and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.
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Slide 3: Stephanie Syjuco, "Block Out the Sun," 2021 (video still). Single-channel video with sound; 5:09 min., looped. Courtesy of the artist, RYAN LEE Gallery, NY and and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.y.
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Slide 4: Gala Porras Kim, "11 Mesoamerican Multiple Perspectives," 2019. Graphite, color pencil, and ink on paper mounted on canvas, mahogany artist’s frame; 60 x 48 in. Courtesy Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins

Firelei Báez, "Untitled (New Chart of the Windward Passages)," 2020. Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas; 66 x 86 1/4 in (167.6 x 219.1 cm). Photograph by Phoebe d'Heurle; courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.

Stephanie Syjuco, "Fragment: Military Officer (from Alexander Schadenberg photographs of the Philippines, circa 1881-1896, National Anthropology Archives, NAA.PhotoLot.15)," 2021. Archival pigment inkjet print; 52 1/2 x 40 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist; RYAN LEE Gallery, NY; and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.

Stephanie Syjuco, "Block Out the Sun," 2021 (video still). Single-channel video with sound; 5:09 min., looped. Courtesy of the artist, RYAN LEE Gallery, NY and and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.y.

Gala Porras Kim, "11 Mesoamerican Multiple Perspectives," 2019. Graphite, color pencil, and ink on paper mounted on canvas, mahogany artist’s frame; 60 x 48 in. Courtesy Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins
The exhibition's title is a reference to “An Archival Impulse" (2004), a text by Hal Foster that set the tone for what would become known as the “archival turn" in contemporary art. This discourse identified a trend wherein artists appropriated and interrogated archival structures and materials. Responding to this framework, this exhibition probes a distinct impulse at play: one in which artists mobilize speculation to perform decolonial interventions.
Speculation, the activity of guessing possible answers to a question without having enough information to be certain, is an action born out of a lack that refuses to accept its condition and theorizes despite insufficient evidence. In relation to the archive, a site pervaded by omissions, it is a form of resistance, an act of hope, and an appeal to all that has been left out of the record.
Turning to speculation both as a creative strategy and a mode of defiance, the work of Báez, Porras-Kim and Syjuco, reveals their objects' and subjects' capacity to resist and ultimately exceed the archive's hegemony. Together, their artistic projects begin to carve a path towards a speculative liberation.
Carlota Ortiz Monasterio is a curator and art historian from Mexico City. Her research focuses on theories of the archive, narrative strategies and practices that explore notions of identity, diaspora and embodied knowledge in relation to Latin America and the Caribbean. She received a BA in Art History from Universidad Iberoamericana and is a 2023 MODA Curates Fellow.
INSTALLATION VIEWS
Image Carousel with 5 slides
A carousel is a rotating set of images. Use the previous and next buttons to change the displayed slide
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Slide 1: Installation view of works by Firelei Báez and Gala Porras-Kim in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon
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Slide 2: Installation view of work by Firelei Báez in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon
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Slide 3: Installation view of woerk by Gala Porras-Kim in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon
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Slide 4: Installation view of works by Stephanie Syjuco in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon
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Slide 5: Installation view of work by Stephanie Syjuco in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon

Installation view of works by Firelei Báez and Gala Porras-Kim in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon

Installation view of work by Firelei Báez in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon

Installation view of woerk by Gala Porras-Kim in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon

Installation view of works by Stephanie Syjuco in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon

Installation view of work by Stephanie Syjuco in "A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive,” on view at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, March 25-April 19, 2023. Photograph by Olympia Shannon