Stan Douglas at La Biennale di Venezia 2022

Vancouver-based artist Stan Douglas will represent Canada at the 59th Venice Biennale.

Douglas is recognized as one of the country’s most acclaimed contemporary artists whose multidisciplinary works, including films, photographs, and, more recently, theatre productions, often reflect on the dynamic potential embedded in pivotal historical moments.

La Biennale di Venezia is the largest and most prestigious contemporary art exhibition in the world with more than 80 countries participating. For more than 60 years, the Canada Pavilion, situated in the Giardini in Venice, has featured the work of the most accomplished Canadian artists, curated by the country’s most renowned curators.

The 59th Biennale di Venezia will take place from May to November 2022.

What's on

About the Artist
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© Evaan Khera
Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner 

Stan Douglas 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 Venice Biennales (1990, 2001, 2005 and 2019). A survey of his work, Stan Douglas: Mise en scène, toured Europe from 2013 until the end of 2015. From 2014 until 2017 his multimedia theater 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, the Hasselblad Award in 2016, and was the 2019 recipient of the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Between 2004 and 2006 he was a professor at Universität der Künste Berlin and since 2009 has been a member of the core faculty in the Grad Art Department of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

The artist’s work is also held in major museum collections around the world including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Tate Gallery, London; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; as well as the National Gallery of Canada, and the Vancouver Art Gallery.

From January 16th to February 22nd, 2020, the prestigious David Zwirner gallery will present Doppelgänger, a two-channel video installation by Douglas that was debuted at the 2019 Venice Biennale, in New York and the work will simultaneously be on view at Victoria Miro, London beginning January 31.

 

Installation view of Doppelgänger, 2019, in Venice. ©Stan Douglas, courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner and Victoria Miro.

Stan Douglas

Still from The Secret Agent, 2015. ©Stan Douglas, courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner and Victoria Miro

Stan Douglas

Still from Luanda-Kinshasa, 2013. ©Stan Douglas, courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner and Victoria Miro

Stan Douglas

Still from Doppelgänger, 2019. ©Stan Douglas, courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner and Victoria Miro

Stan Douglas

Stranded, from the Blackout series, 2017. ©Stan Douglas, courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner and Victoria Miro

Stan Douglas

JNNJ, from the DCT series, 2017. ©Stan Douglas, courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner and Victoria Miro

Stan Douglas

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. As owner and commissioner of the Canadian Pavilion in Venice, the National Gallery of Canada is in a perfect position to share with the world what Canadians are most excited about in art.

Sasha Suda, PhD, Director and CEO, National Gallery of Canada.

About the Curator:
Reid Shier
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Reid Shier is the Director of The Polygon Gallery, formally Presentation House Gallery, in North Vancouver. Since joining The Polygon in 2006, Shier spearheaded the development of a new $17.5M waterfront facility, which opened in 2017. Prior to this, Shier was Chief Curator of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2004–06), Curator of the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, (2002–04), and Director/Curator of the artist run Or Gallery, Vancouver (1996–2001). Shier has curated more than eighty exhibitions and his critical writing has been published broadly, including a recent essay on Stan Douglas’ public artwork Abbott and Cordova, 7 August 1971.

It’s traditional for the artist to select the curator and Reid Shier is the ideal choice to fully realize Stan’s artistic vision.

Kitty Scott, Deputy Director & Chief Curator,
National Gallery of Canada

It is an honour to be chosen as curator for Stan Douglas’ exhibition for the Canada Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Douglas has been a colleague and friend for over three decades, during which I’ve had the privilege of watching his international reputation as one of Canada’s most significant contemporary artists grow and flourish.

Reid Shier, Director of the Polygon Gallery and Curator for the Canada Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale

About the Canadian
Jury Committee
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Stan Douglas was selected by a national committee of experts in contemporary Canadian art comprised of:

• John Zeppetelli, Director and Chief Curator, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
• Reid Shier, Director, The Polygon Gallery
• Kitty Scott, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, National Gallery of Canada
• Sasha Suda, PhD, Director and CEO, National Gallery of Canada.


 

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The official Canadian representation at the Venice Biennale is made possible through the generous financial support of private philanthropists and corporations from Canada and abroad. Learn more

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