Stan Douglas traces the hidden rhythms of history through film, photography, and the expressive power of music.
29 June 2026
How do societies remember moments of upheaval? How do images preserve what official histories choose to forget? In ‘Bodies Never Lie’, internationally celebrated Canadian artist Stan Douglas brings together film, photography, and immersive installation to examine the fragile relationship between memory, power, and collective resistance.
At the heart of the exhibition is Exquisite Corpse, a newly commissioned film set within the world of 1950s flamenco under Franco’s dictatorship. Moving beyond music as performance, Douglas explores flamenco as a coded language shaped by censorship, identity, and political repression. Through layered storytelling and sophisticated cinematic techniques, the work reveals how cultural expression becomes a site of survival and dissent.
The exhibition also presents key photographic series including 2011 ≠ 1848, Penn Station’s Half Century, and The Enemy of All Mankind: Nine Scenes from John Gay’s Polly. Across these works, Douglas draws compelling parallels between historical revolutions and contemporary unrest, exposing the recurring patterns through which societies confront inequality, transformation, and political change. Rather than presenting history as a fixed narrative, he reveals it as a living, contested process that continues to shape the present.
Borrowing its title from choreographer Agnes De Mille’s observation that “bodies never lie”, the exhibition proposes the body, alongside sound and image, as an enduring witness to history. At LUMA Arles, Douglas offers a timely meditation on the ways art can uncover suppressed narratives and illuminate the complex intersections of memory, resistance, and liberation.
This exhibition is on view at LUMA Arles in France from 4 July 2026 until 10 January 2027.
