Delfina Foundation announces the London premiere of The Scar, a fiction film installation by London and Istanbul based artists Noor Afshan Mirza and Brad Butler.

The Scar is a film in three chapters (The State of the State, The Mouth of the Shark and The Gossip), inspired by a true event with names, scenes and locations having been fictionalised through the use of Magical Realism. In chapter one, we see four passengers on a journey in a black Mercedes, unaware of their significance as state archetypes: the Chief of Police, a politician and a right- wing assassin. The fourth passenger is Yenge, the only female traveller, silenced by the genre conventions of her role in the film. In chapter two, Yenge’s noir voiceover begins to interrupt the male characters’ forced bravado as they are haunted by the Resistant Dead - the residual movements created from stories of people refusing to be forgotten. The film’s final part, The Gossip, addresses tales of female emancipation and empowerment, where a group of female activists transcend time, geographical borders and linguistic barriers to gather in a neutral nether- realm of conversation and mutual support.

Mirza and Butler’s practice takes on, and deconstructs, urgent and complex narratives around our relationship to state power as seen in The Scar, which engages with issues of inequality and corruption, ultimately proposing a post-patriarchal near future.

The Scar, which began development whilst Mirza and Butler were artists-in-residence at Delfina Foundation in 2015, will be shown as an immersive five-screen installation at Delfina Foundation. The exhibition is shown alongside an associated programme of workshops, talks and performances, co-curated with Mirza and Butler, which imagines future feminism and its relation to the past and to the present.