Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848
Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 presents a series of works inspired by historical events of social and political turbulence. Douglas connects points of social rupture, rendering in minute detail and with technical ingenuity historic moments of protest, riot, and occupation from 2011 that echoed upheavals that swept Europe in 1848.
Event/Exhibition meta autogenerated block.
When
February 3, 2023 – June 4, 2023
Where
Remai Modern
Presented by
RBC (tour sponsor), with additional support from RBC Wealth Management (Saskatoon)
The exhibition features four large-scale panoramic photographs depicting different protests and riots from 2011: the start of the Arab Spring in Tunis on January 12 with sit-ins and protests along Avenue Habib Bourguiba; the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver on June 15; clashes between youth and police in London on August 9; and the arrest of Occupy Wall Street protestors on Brooklyn Bridge in New York on October 1. Douglas created the images by combining meticulous and elaborate re-enactments of the events, high-resolution plate shots of each city site, together with aerial documentary footage.
The exhibition also features a two-channel video installation ISDN, an immersive installation that depicts a fictionalized collaboration between rappers from London’s Grime and Cairo’s Mahraganat music scenes. Titled ISDN, after a now-outdated mode of transmitting high-quality audio over telephone lines, the video imagines rappers from the two cities exchanging beats and lyrics in improvised studios, working across space and time to create music collaboratively.
Artist
Stan Douglas (b. 1960, Vancouver) is a visual artist who lives and works in Vancouver and Los Angeles. His films and photographs have been included in exhibitions internationally since the early 1980s, including at documenta IX, X and XI (1992, 1997, 2002) and in four previous Biennale Artes (1990, 2001, 2005 and 2019). A survey of his work, Stan Douglas: Mise en scene, toured Europe from 2013 until the end of 2015. From 2014 until 2017 his multimedia theatre production Helen Lawrence was presented in Vancouver, Toronto, Munich, Antwerp, Edinburgh, Brooklyn and Los Angeles. Douglas received the International Centre of Photography’s Infinity Award in 2012, the Scotiabank Photography Award in 2013, the Hasselblad Award in 2016, 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. Between 2004 and 2006 he was a professor at Universität der Künste Berlin and is currently Chair of the Graduate Art Program of ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Curatorial Team
This exhibition is curated by Reid Shier, Polygon Gallery and is presented as a partnership between the National Gallery of Canada, Remai Modern and the Polygon Gallery.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
