By Sean Kwok and Bhijan
The Cooper Gallery at DJCAD has opened its doors to The Debtor’s Portal, a solo exhibition by Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and artist Bahar Noorizadeh.
Noorizadeh, who is also the founder of Weird Economies, is known for interrogating the ideological foundations of global finance through film and installation.
Her latest exhibition continues that exploration by immersing visitors in a disorienting yet meticulously constructed reflection on capitalism’s past, present and speculative futures.
Curators from DJCAD’s Cooper Gallery and The Otolith Collective have co-developed what they describe as a “synergy” of “curation, critique, and creation” for a “radical” unpacking of reality. Indeed, the exhibition itself seems like an experiment of time and space.
At the centre of the exhibition is Free to Choose (2023), a “financial sci-fi” film produced in collaboration with Brazilian filmmaker Rudá Babau.
The film takes Hong Kong as its focal point, once heralded as the model free-market economy by figures such as Margaret Thatcher and economist Milton Friedman.
Across the gallery space, a timeline of Iran’s banking history hovers beside a pop-up library, connecting historical financial infrastructures to contemporary uprisings against state tyranny.
The exhibition also gestures towards Scotland’s own legacy in shaping political economy, weaving local histories into a broader global narrative.
Visually, The Debtor’s Portal is intriguing. Elon Musk memes drift through video game worlds; cars crash through fifty years of accumulated capital; winds sweep through the banks of Iran.
These collages of colour and sound blur the boundaries between human and inhuman forces, suggesting that the “weird economies” Noorizadeh identifies are as psychological and cultural as they are financial.
The immersive exhibition will be running until the 11th of April.
Those interested in surrealist film and art will have plenty of time to visit the Cooper Gallery and enjoy every aspect of this unique and cleverly stylised experience.