Stan Douglas (*1960 in Vancouver) is like no other artist in his ability to expand the spaces of the cinema and the museum in sensory and intellectual ways. Behind almost all of his works is the exploration of a particular place, whose history is reflected upon through literary, filmic, or musical sources. Douglas comes from the Vancouver School of conceptual photographers, to which Jeff Wall and Rodney Graham also belong. The photo for our Collector’s Edition comes from Douglas’ approach to post-revolutionary Cuba . In an interview he explained that in North America, an old house would simply be torn down. “But in Cuba, that’s not the case–it’s become a bit of a palimpsest.” Here, old buildings are not demolished and erased from memory, but simply written over, painted over, and used in different ways. An example of this type of layering in the old city of Havana graces our Collector’s Edition: a modern mural beneath an ornamental stucco ceiling.
