Stan Douglas to Represent Canada at Venice Biennale
Stan Douglas, (photo © Evaan Kheraj Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner Courtoisie de l’artiste, Victoria Miro et David Zwirner)
Vancouver-based artist Stan Douglas will represent Canada at the 2021 Venice Biennale, the National Gallery of Canada announced today.
Douglas, a leading contemporary artist, is known for multidisciplinary works, including films, photographs and theatre productions that reflect pivotal historical moments.
“Stan Douglas is one of this country’s most internationally respected artists and we are thrilled to be supporting the development of a new work for the Venice Biennale,” says the gallery's director, Sasha Suda.
Douglas was selected by a committee of experts comprised of Suda, along with John Zeppetelli, director of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Reid Shier, director of the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver; and Kitty Scott, deputy director and chief curator of the National Gallery.
The jury cited Douglas' continuing re-imagination of photography and multi-channel film and video installation, as well as his investigations into local histories and social forces.
Since the early 1980s, Douglas' films and photographs have been included in international exhibitions, including documenta IX, X and XI (1992, 1997 and 2002) and four Venice Biennales (1990, 2001, 2005 and 2019).
A survey show, Stan Douglas: Mise en scène, toured Europe from 2013 to 2015. Between 2014 and 2017, Douglas' multimedia theatre production, Helen Lawrence, was presented in Vancouver, Toronto, Munich, Antwerp, Edinburgh, Brooklyn and Los Angeles.
Douglas received the International Centre for Photography’s Infinity Prize in 2012, the Scotiabank Photography Award in 2013 and the Hasselblad Award in 2016. In 2019, he was awarded the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
Between 2004 and 2006, Douglas was a professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Since 2009, he has taught at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Work by Douglas is held by major museums, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Tate Gallery in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery of Canada.
The Venice Biennale is one of the world's largest contemporary art exhibitions, with more than 80 participating countries. Exhibitions at the Canada Pavilion are commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and produced in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts.
Over six decades, the pavilion has featured work by Emily Carr, David Milne, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Alex Colville, Guido Molinari, Michael Snow, General Idea, Geneviève Cadieux, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Rebecca Belmore, David Altmejd, Steven Shearer, Shary Boyle, BGL, Geoffrey Farmer, and the art collective Isuma.
Source: National Gallery of Canada
