Syjuco did not arbitrarily reference countries that lag in receiving the benefits of technology-fueled development. Born in Manila before immigrating to San Francisco, she obviously is aware of the differences between the First and Third Worlds, and personally has experienced what it means to be considered an "Other" due to her own physicality (color can be a narrative and the brown stain on her boxes may be considered the kayumanggi—brown color associated with some Filipino skin tones). Consequently, her challenging the viewer to identify what are Platonically-unidentifiable brown boxes may be a metaphor for the ever-changing shifts in identity experienced by and imposed by others (obviously not an uncommon occurrence among immigrants).

It is logical, therefore, that Syjuco prevents herself from being totally in control of her works. The modular units in her installations are arranged on the floor in a pattern, but not tied down to that pattern so that the works can be reconfigured at a later date and possibly by someone else. The flexibility of her installations goes beyond the recognition of reality as flux, a point where other contemporary artists may cease (and have ceased) in their exploration. Syjuco has sculpted flexibility to comment on the insidiousness of control, the ways in which it is practiced—including how it hurts people through abuse, discrimination and, perhaps less proactively but no less significantly, being ignored.

As part of undermining the impulse to control, Syjuco also created sculptures utilizing surveillance cameras—a point that resonates even before the current atmosphere of heightened fear over terrorism and how such awareness adversely affects civil liberties. One of her "fake surveillance" sculptures is offered as a camera overlooking the entrance of the gallery. After viewers enter an art gallery, what is identified and recognized is under the control of how the viewers look (or not). But the camera also looks at the viewers. The net effect is that if a viewer (as many gallery visitors do) pontificates over what a particular art work means, that viewer's conclusion is under the caveat of that particular viewer's subjectivity. By assessing the viewer's gaze as related to the vicissitudes of that viewer's individuality, Syjuco not only dilutes the colonizing gaze but replaces it with fairness and possibly more accuracy.

Surveillance Cams (Duo), 2002 Foamboard, Contact Paper, Velcro, LED Light, Foam Tubing, AA Batteries Dimensions variable

Syjuco further expands her discourse in a work comprised of two surveillance cameras hung above the front desk of the gallery. The cameras ignore their surroundings as they are positioned to look only at each other. The mind can boggle at the implication of twin cameras surveying each other: spying on the spy and trying to maintain pursuit without resort to psychological diagramming; the vertiginous image of a mirror mirroring a mirror; the strain of maintaining the unblinking gaze as vision narrows until what the eyes see is, simply, another eye; witnessing a blood vessel pop and wondering if that occurred in your eye; feeling a tear leak onto your cheek without knowing if you are really weeping; and so on. For me, the work's implications of surveying what surveys one back in a seamlessly circular process furrow my brow until I am forced to resort to poetry, such as to quote from Paul Celan's poem Atemwende or Breathturn:

Ich kenne dich, du bist die tief Gebeugte,
ich, der Durchbohrte, bin dir untertan.
Wo flammt ein Wort, das fur uns beide zeugte?
Du-ganza, ganza wirklich. Ich-ganz Wahn.

(I know you, you're the one bent over low,
and I, the one pierced through, am in your need.
Where flames a word to witness for us both?
You—wholly real. I—wholly mad.)

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