Douglas and the art of shifting perspective

Jeu de Paume in Paris presents Stan Douglas. Parallax, the most significant exhibition devoted to the Canadian artist in France in more than thirty years. Co-produced with MACBA in Barcelona and curated by Gloria Moure with Marta Ponsa, it traces almost four decades of work across photography, film and installation. Born in 1960 in Vancouver, where he lives and works, Douglas is one of the most influential figures on the international scene. In 2016 he received the Hasselblad Award and in 2022 he represented Canada at the Venice Biennale. Since the late 1980s he has created works that question how history is constructed, represented and passed on, and the role of images and technology in shaping collective memory. The title explains the method. Parallax is the apparent shift of an object depending on the viewpoint from which it is seen: every gaze is therefore partial and oriented. Douglas uses this principle to dismantle linear views of history and to show that narratives are always under construction, and that no image is neutral. On show are the photographic series that reconstruct real or imagined episodes with the precision of a film set: Crowds and Riots (2008), with the crowds and clashes of 20th-century Vancouver; Midcentury Studio (2010), a homage to postwar press photography; Disco Angola (2012), on the interweaving of the New York music scene and the Angolan civil war in the 1970s; Scenes from the Blackout (2017) and 2011 ≠ 1848, which sets the 2011 London riots alongside the European uprisings of the 19th century. Among the most recent works are the series inspired by John Gay's Polly (2024) and the installation Birth of a Nation (2025). Ample space is also given to video installations, the core of his practice: from Hors-Champs (1992) and Der Sandmann (1995) to Inconsolable Memories (2005), from The Secret Agent (2015), loosely based on Conrad, to Luanda-Kinshasa (2013) and ISDN (2022). Works in which the narrative repeats, breaks off or recombines, compelling viewers to question what they are looking at.