Stan Douglas (b. 1960, Vancouver; lives in Vancouver) examines how films and photographs influence our understandings of history. Drawing on intensive research and employing meticulous attention to detail, the artist utilizes live actors, costumes, props, and sets to render real and imagined scenes from the recent past with an uncanny degree of accuracy.
Luanda-Kinshasa (2014)—Douglas’s monumental six-hour video installation, jointly acquired by PAMM and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—depicts a fictitious band of professional musicians at the famed CBS 30th Street studio in New York City, sometime during the 1970s. Before closing its doors in 1981, “the Church” (as the studio was colloquially known) generated a host of important jazz, rock, pop, and classical recordings by artists such as Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Glenn Gould, and Billie Holiday.
Douglas’s interest in nonlinear narrative is apparent in the film’s experimental temporal structure, which functions like a musical improvisation. What seems at first to be a straightforward progression turns out to contain repeating and recombined passages. As the work’s epic duration takes hold, it becomes difficult to tell whether time is moving forward or folding in on itself. In this way, Douglas shakes our faith in the veracity of his otherwise seamless “documentation,” scrambling the distinctions between fact and fiction, past and present.
In both its title and its Afrobeat-influenced soundtrack, Luanda-Kinshasa subtly alludes to the emergence of a globally minded black consciousness throughout the 1970s. The eclectic fashions and scenography on display function together with the diverse ethnicities and genders of the band members to vividly evoke the era’s complex racial dynamics and loaded cultural atmosphere. The film testifies, ultimately, to the socially unifying power of music.
Major solo exhibitions of Stan Douglas’s work have been presented at institutional venues including Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes, France; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Wiels Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brussels; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Centre Culturel Canadien, paris; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Power Plant, Toronto; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Serpentine Gallery, London, among several others. Douglas is the recipient of the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, New York; Scotiabank Photography Award, and numerous other honors.
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Stan Douglas: Luanda-KinshasaPerez Art Museum Miami - PAMM Main address:
Perez Art Museum Miami - PAMMWells Fargo Center1103 Biscayne Blvd.FL 33132Miami, United statesPerez Art Museum Miami - PAMMWells Fargo Center1103 Biscayne Blvd.FL 33132Miami, United statesStan Douglas (b. 1960, Vancouver; lives in Vancouver) examines how films and photographs influence our understandings of history. Drawing on intensive research and employing meticulous attention to detail, the artist utilizes live actors, costumes, props, and sets to render real and imagined scenes from the recent past with an uncanny degree of accuracy.
Luanda-Kinshasa (2014)—Douglas’s monumental six-hour video installation, jointly acquired by PAMM and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—depicts a fictitious band of professional musicians at the famed CBS 30th Street studio in New York City, sometime during the 1970s. Before closing its doors in 1981, “the Church” (as the studio was colloquially known) generated a host of important jazz, rock, pop, and classical recordings by artists such as Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Glenn Gould, and Billie Holiday.
Douglas’s interest in nonlinear narrative is apparent in the film’s experimental temporal structure, which functions like a musical improvisation. What seems at first to be a straightforward progression turns out to contain repeating and recombined passages. As the work’s epic duration takes hold, it becomes difficult to tell whether time is moving forward or folding in on itself. In this way, Douglas shakes our faith in the veracity of his otherwise seamless “documentation,” scrambling the distinctions between fact and fiction, past and present.
In both its title and its Afrobeat-influenced soundtrack, Luanda-Kinshasa subtly alludes to the emergence of a globally minded black consciousness throughout the 1970s. The eclectic fashions and scenography on display function together with the diverse ethnicities and genders of the band members to vividly evoke the era’s complex racial dynamics and loaded cultural atmosphere. The film testifies, ultimately, to the socially unifying power of music.
Major solo exhibitions of Stan Douglas’s work have been presented at institutional venues including Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes, France; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Wiels Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brussels; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Centre Culturel Canadien, paris; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Power Plant, Toronto; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Serpentine Gallery, London, among several others. Douglas is the recipient of the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, New York; Scotiabank Photography Award, and numerous other honors. Book tickets
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