Stan Douglas is anxious with moments in historical past, each actual, and fictionalised from true occasions. How has the ignored impacted the current day, and what can we uncover about ourselves? How can we deepen our understanding of how race, gender and energy affect us as we speak?
‘I all the time had this concept that pictures arose as a result of the bourgeois needed self-representation,’ Douglas tells us. ‘They did not need [only] the church or aristocracy to have the means to characterize themselves [through painted portraits], and pictures was a manner of doing that. It is sort of odd that it occurred in so many nations concurrently, round 1830, and that this medium was invented so individuals may make their very own photos routinely.’
Stan Douglas, Overture: Through which Convicted Brigand Captain Macheath is Transported to the West Indies The place He will likely be Impressed into Indentured Labour, 2024
(Picture credit score: © Stan Douglas. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner)
Douglas makes use of movie and pictures to zero in on artwork, movie, music and occasions, interrogating a that means that always pertains to id. In analysing how these items have been interpreted, he typically attracts out ignored truths and divulges how the passing of time has altered the unique materials, questioning widespread interpretations of occasions that in some instances have change into cultural touchstones. Previous works embrace 2011 ≠ 1848, Mare Avenue and Pembury Property, which appeared on the UK riots in 2011; and Luanda-Kinshasa (2013), an set up exhibiting an imagined jazz recording session and referencing the affect of jazz and Black musicians working in Europe within the Nineteen Seventies.
‘I’m searching for liminal moments, issues which had been pivotal in a sure situation. Typically, some issues are obscure or unknown, moments which characterize a turning level in historical past however are little understood,’ Douglas explains over video chat. ‘Any person has been obscured by the winner of historical past, and it’s the remainder of that second which I am taking a look at.’
He seems for moments in historical past that may characterize a misplaced fact of that particular time. ‘Typically I am going to have been looking for an analogue between the visible illustration within the installations and the situation I am making an attempt to characterize, sure concepts for seen mechanisms and safety methods that don’t have any actual objective. I then come throughout a topic that I discover attention-grabbing and realise that’s the good factor for this concept. I can put these two issues collectively and work for that.’
Stan Douglas, Act I, Scene XI: Through which Polly Involves Perceive that Mrs.Trapes has Offered Her to Mr. Ducat as a Courtesan, 2024
(Picture credit score: © Stan Douglas. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner)
His exhibition at London’s Victoria Miro Gallery, ‘Stan Douglas: Delivery of a Nation and The Enemy of All Mankind’ takes two works of fiction, a play and a movie and reconstructs them. Enemy of All Mankind: 9 Scenes from John Homosexual’s seems on the satirical play Polly (1729), the sequel to John Homosexual’s The Beggar’s Opera that was by no means carried out in his lifetime. The story follows the character Macheath from the West Indies, the place he disguises himself as a Black man on the run. He’s pursued internationally by Polly Peachum, who in flip disguises herself as a person to keep away from abuse whereas in service. Macheath finally ends up being executed by indigenous King Pohetohee, engaged on behalf of the colonial energy, whereas Polly reveals her id and marries the king’s son.
‘Polly shifts by means of these totally different identities and it describes how issues like race and gender are all performative not directly, and I discovered that to be fairly attention-grabbing,’ Douglas says. ‘The people who find themselves the aristocrats on the island, the colonisers, distinguish themselves from those who weren’t. It is a very, very false id, and it performs with all these tropes, which can be why it was banned within the lifetime of John Homosexual. It was by no means carried out in his lifetime, as a result of the powers that be knew he can be satirising their colonial ambitions and their authority.’
Douglas’ staged photographic works that discover Polly present key moments within the story – Macheath’s dying, Polly’s resolution to disguise herself and a picture of an empty stage. In highlighting the performative nature of imposed hierarchies, Douglas reveals their vacancy. The immaculately realised photos are staged to perfection, and lit immaculately, making a narrative that highlights the controversies inside Polly.
The images sit alongside the multi-channel movie work Delivery of a Nation, which offers with the racist basic movie. Regardless of its heroising of the Ku Klux Klan and base depictions of Black individuals, it’s nonetheless studied routinely, as its makers pioneered a lot of contemporary filmmaking in its manufacturing.
‘They each deal with id in a sure manner, or identification in a sure manner. Sure teams figuring out as being one other: one being superior, one being inferior,’ says Douglas, explaining the works’ juxtaposition.
Stan Douglas, Act III, Scene VII: Through which the pirate Morano (aka Captain Macheath) challenges, and is vanquished by, the Maroon Queen Pohetohee from the sequence, The Enemy of All Mankind: 9 Scenes from John Homosexual’s Polly (1729), 2024
(Picture credit score: © Stan Douglas. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner)
A bit of the unique movie performs, which exhibits an actor in blackface enjoying ‘Gus’, declaring his affection for a white lady who then throws herself off a cliff. Gus is then put to trial by the KKK and lynched. Two different variations of the movie play with the unique: deft of their alignment, they throw into aid each the wonder and the egregiousness of the unique movie.
‘It may be uncanny while you see these two issues that are the identical however totally different; it’s this doppelgänger impact,’ says Douglas. ‘My take is to have a look at the racist fantasy of the character Gus, who’s a white man in blackface within the unique, after which break it up into two new characters of my invention. Sam and Tom (performed by Black actors) are encountered by the 2 white characters, Ben and Flora, in several methods.’
The quick work might reveal how surprising the unique movie is by modern requirements, nevertheless it additionally serves as a chilling reminder of how just lately it was made. Within the context of the rise of far-right politics in the US, the affect of the work is profoundly disturbing. In forcing us to check representations of Blackness and gender, these works present us each the place we now have been and the place we’re at.
Stan Douglas is at Victoria Miro till 1 November 2025, victoria-miro.com
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Supply: Wallpaper