Stan Douglas to Display Work in Two Venues at Venice Biennale
Stan Douglas on set in Cairo, 2021. (courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner. © Seham)
Stan Douglas, Canada's representative at the Venice Biennale will unveil work next month across two venues, a first for the country, the National Gallery of Canada announced Monday.
The exhibition, 2011 ≠ 1848, includes four large-scale photographs in the Canada Pavilion in the Giardini, and a new two-channel video installation in the Magazzini del Sale No. 5, a 16th-century salt warehouse in Dorsoduro, one of Venice's oldest areas, said the gallery, the exhibition's commissioner.
The exhibition is inspired by the 10th anniversary of 2011, which saw global social and political unrest, including the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa and the Occupy protests, which began in New York. The biennale was postponed a year due to the pandemic.
Douglas contrasts the events of 2011 to those in 1848, a year in which European middle and working classes fought against restrictions to democratic freedoms by aristocratic elites.
"Revolt in 1848 was continental, as news spread by print media, but revolt in 2011 was global, with news spread virally by way of electronic media," the gallery says. "Across Europe and North America, the events of 2011 were simply policed and ignored. In North Africa and the Middle East they were suppressed or subverted, with a few notable exceptions. The works explore the events of 2011 as unconscious reactions to the economic and political status quo which followed the recession of 2008, and examine the ways in which social media fuelled movements for change."
The exhibition, curated by Reid Shier, runs from April 23 to Nov. 27.
Douglas, based between Vancouver and Los Angeles, has a multidisciplinary practice that includes films, photographs and – more recently – theatre productions. He received the Scotiabank Photography Award in 2013, the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 and the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2021. He is chair of the graduate art program of the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Source: National Gallery of Canada
