Stan Douglas: Disco Angola

The artist's second solo show with Victoria Miro and his first at our new Mayfair gallery.

In Midcentury Studio, Douglas' first exhibition with Victoria Miro, monochrome photographs were created in the guise of a mid-twentieth century Canadian press photographer. In the case of Disco Angola the artist assumes the persona of a fictional photo-journalist living in the mid 1970s and documenting two very different worlds: the nascent disco underground in New York and the civil war in newly independent Angola. From these culturally and geographically incongruent communities emerges a subtle dialogue that encompasses self-expression, liberation and culture.

The works in Disco Angola are all dated from 1974 or 1975, a pivotal moment in the history of global political economy: the Bretton Woods monetary regime had collapsed, the 1973 oil crisis was just abating, global markets were enduring the worst crash since the great Depression and the rapprochement between the US and the Soviet Union was breaking down. New York was a city on the verge of bankruptcy and the burgeoning disco scene offers Douglas' protagonist respite from the gritty realities of day-to-day life.