Stan Douglas: Birth of a Nation and The Enemy of All Mankind

Victoria Miro is delighted to present Stan Douglas’ sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, which features the European premiere of the Canadian artist’s multi-channel video installation, Birth of a Nation, and works from a new photographic series, The Enemy of All Mankind: Nine Scenes from John Gay’s Polly.

Since the late-1980s, Stan Douglas has examined complex intersections of narrative, fact and fiction while simultaneously scrutinising the media he employs, technology’s role in image making and its influence on our understanding of reality. This exhibition marks the UK premiere of Birth of a Nation, Douglas’ new multi-channel video installation that confronts D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, a technically groundbreaking but deeply racist work that exalts white supremacy. Douglas’ video installation is shown together with photographs from The Enemy of All Mankind: Nine Scenes from John Gay’s Polly, a series in which Douglas stages scenes from the eighteenth-century comic opera Polly, written by English dramatist John Gay (1685–1732) and the sequel to his The Beggar’s Opera. Each of these works, although drawn from historic references, engages with a range of themes such as race, class and gender, that remain highly relevant today. Across the five screens of Birth of a Nation, Douglas focuses on one narrative strand of Griffith’s original, mirroring, altering and replaying scenes from multiple perspectives and with the introduction of new characters. In The Enemy of All Mankind the artist adapts scenes and modifies characters from Gay’s opera, enlisting a cast of actors to create large-scale photographs that position the viewer as a voyeuristic witness to the various narrative turns and dynamic shifts at play.

Image: Stan Douglas, Act III, Scene VII: In which the pirate Morano (aka Captain Macheath) challenges, and is vanquished by, the Maroon Queen Pohetohee from the series, The Enemy of All Mankind: Nine Scenes from John Gay’s Polly (1729), 2024
Inkjet print mounted on Dibond aluminium
150.5 x 301 cm
59 1/4 x 118 1/2 in
© Stan Douglas
Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and David Zwirner