Since the late 1980s, he has created works in film and photography as well as theatre productions and other multidisciplinary projects that investigate the parameters of their respective mediums.

His ongoing inquiry into technology's role in image making, and how those mediations infiltrate and shape collective memory, has resulted in works that are at once specific in their historical and cultural references and broadly accessible.

Hoffmann and the Brothers Grimm, blues and free jazz, television and Hollywood, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud haunt the uncanny montages of the Canadian artist.

Among numerous group exhibitions, Douglas was included in the 1995 Carnegie International, the 1995 Whitney Biennial, the 1997 Skulptur Projekte Münster and Documenta X in Kassel.

[18] Four American musicians, George E. Lewis (trombone), Douglas Ewart (saxophone), Kent Carter (bass) and Oliver Johnson (drums) who lived in France during the free jazz period in the 1960s, improvise Albert Ayler's 1965 composition "Spirits Rejoice.".

[21] Marking the first time the artist has filmed on location in New York,[22] however, the setting is a reimagined Manhattan milieu in the 1970s, namely the CBS 30th Street Studio.

[23][24] His use of video and film, in addition to photography, as well as his specific interests in cinematic history, forms and spatial concerns set him apart from peers such as Jeff Wall.

[12] Douglas has reworked films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964), Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977) and Orson Welles's Journey into Fear (1943) exploring "the parameters, functions and limits of cinematic adaptation.

In his 1995 Art in America review Tom Eccles describes the work as "creating the effect of a recurring nightmare" as the titular character, rather than escaping is "caught in the film loop, forever trapped within the confines of the office.

This version is shot in black and white, which gives it the feel of a recollected experience, and Douglas has slowed the action, bringing Marnie's inherent voyeurism into focus.

The short narratives "mimic television's editing techniques" and when the videos were aired during the regular commercial breaks, viewers called the station to ask what was being sold.

[29] An early video work, Mime (the second part of Deux Devises, 1983) consisted of a close-up of Douglas' mouth in the shape of phonemes, which are then edited to sync up with the song "Preachin' Blues" by Robert Johnson.

The absurdity of the forever repeating narrative, of the two protagonists in an endless loop, always the same words but from different points of reference is an allusion to Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot.

The soundtrack consists of Vancouver writer Gerald Creede reading Douglas's reworking of various sentences taken from the opening section of Marcel Proust's A la recherche de temps perdu.

"[33] Douglas's Monodramas are ten 30- to 60-second videos from 1991, conceived as interventions into commercial television, broadcast nightly in British Columbia for three weeks in 1992.

[34] These short narratives, set in bleak suburban locations, mimic television's editing techniques, with plots dealing often mundane situations and with a slight twist at the end.

Hoffmann's original 1816 short story and Sigmund Freud's 1919 essay "The Uncanny", consists of a double projection where the film is literally split down the middle and reassembled so the two sides are slightly out of sync.

Set in 1950s Vancouver in the Strathcona redevelopment, the installation explores the modernist notion of urban renewal with the demolition of existing architecture in favour of grids of apartment blocks.

The conversation flares up during a discussion of the day's horse races and the 6 minute filmed loop is repeated from different angles on a split screen, each cycle presenting ever-changing configurations of point-of-view.

[40] Douglas has exhibited at the Venice Biennale previously, most recently in 2019 where he debuted the work the two-channel video installation Doppelgänger (2019), "set in an alternate present in which a solitary astronaut and her other-world counterpart each arrives 'home' to find that everything is the reverse of what she once knew.

"[41] The jury, including National Gallery director Sasha Suda and chief curator Kitty Scott, picked Douglas citing "the relevance of his work to the global debates taking place in Venice.