Stan Douglas: Ghostlight

Douglas' first US survey charts his global influence and innovation across 40 works and reimagines D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Published with Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Since the 1980s, Canadian artist Stan Douglas (born 1960) has created films, installations, photographs and other multidisciplinary projects that address moments of rupture where "history could go one way or the other." Across formats, his images recall things that haunt: unresolved moments, political tumult and violent turning points; plots that retain a hold, however imperceptible, on the present. His work operates within the genres of cinema, photography and theater to present a point of view that is always staged. Douglas' rigorous explorations of these charged histories show us how to "think historically in the present" and frame contemporary crises in a longer timeline.