Stan Douglas has been making refined, socially engaged films, video installations and photos since the end of the 1980s. He shares his interest in immigration issues, as visualised in the history of film and photography, with fellow Vancouver-born artist Jeff Wall. Douglas likes to bring supressed memories and forgotten histories out of the shadows. He explores how history is depicted and exposes the constructed and manipulative nature of the established visual culture.
He unites figures from different historical periods in his work. In so doing, he ruptures the prevailing Western historical framework with its linear sequence of facts and events. This creates an in-between space in which he considers underexposed social phenomena and oppressed communities. The problem of alienation is a core theme within his oeuvre. Through new media, he exposes inner disorientation, hidden tensions and communication breakdowns in social relationships.
In his early films, Douglas severed the linear storyline by mixing image and sound. He sought to create an open narrative form that could be freely interpreted. A second important theme is the impossibility of reaching a definitive reconstruction of the facts. Reality is neither linear nor unambiguous. The only correct rendering is that of different possibilities. For example, Douglas borrows material from crime and spy novels, Hollywood-style Westerns and the classical literature of Becket and Kafka, amongst others, to create ready-made contexts for his complex reconstructions of historical events.
Douglas focuses on past moments of uncertainty, transition and emancipation in many of his works. He digs into historical surrender in order to rewrite it on the basis of conscientious research and creates visual storylines that can never be reduced to a single all-embracing perspective. In the video installation ‘The Secret Agent’ (2015), which is based on Joseph Conrad’s novel, he shifts the action from late-nineteenth-century London to Portugal during the Carnation Revolution of 1974.
Photography has occupied an important place in Douglas’ oeuvre since 2008. The artist makes large-format colour photos on historical subjects, such as emancipation movements in his home city of Vancouver, and cultural phenomena, like disco music from the former Portuguese colony of Angola. In recent years, he has also been exploring new ground with multimedia theatre productions featuring innovative combinations of acting, visual art, live-action film and computer images.
