The Showroom Mural Commission – Bahar Noorizadeh: In Mortua Manu / In A Dead Hand

Iranian-Canadian artist Bahar Noorizadeh presents two interrelated projects including a new mural commission that approaches The Showroom's facade as a portal into a detective mystery video game. About This Autumn The Showroom has invited Iranian-Canadian artist Bahar Noorizadeh to work with its interior and exterior spaces to present two interrelated projects that will be the artist's most significant presentation in the UK to date. For her new mural commission Bahar Noorizadeh approaches the facade of The Showroom as a portal into her new detective mystery video game. The skin of The Showroom becomes an entrance to polyphonic histories of Church Street and its surrounding area across different spaces: architecture drifting aloft, subterranean police stations, and buried subways. Playable via a mobile console that will tour the neighbourhood, the video game renders what exists, what has been erased, and what remains plausible. The narrative is structured as an evolving conspiracy. Here, Noorizadeh combines her interest in information regimes and their shaping of urban space with her research into gamification as a mechanism of political and economic control. Informed by local oral histories and memories gathered by the artist, the work traces the ongoing development, re-zoning, and gentrification of The Showroom's surrounding area, seeking to address these as markers of the capitalisation of urban life. The game's structure remains open-ended and additive, with new puzzles folded into the plot throughout the year. The artwork title, In Mortua Manu / In A Dead Hand references the Latin legal phrase 'In Mortua Manu', meaning 'In a Dead Hand'. The term refers to property held as if by an immortal entity, such as a corporation or religious institution, making the said property in the perpetual, inalienable ownership of that entity. The artist would like to thank Game Designer Alexandre Pina and Game Programming Assistant Ralph McCoy for video game production, as well as illustration artist Amrit Ruprai for their contribution. Alongside the mural Noorizadeh presents The Debtor's Portal in the gallery space. Read more Toggle Installation Digital