Hoda
Afshar

At the intersection of conceptual, staged and documentary image-making, Hoda Afshar’s artistic practice explores the representation of gender, marginality and displacement. Initially drawn to the potential of the documentary image to unearth hidden realities, she is equally committed to critiquing the collusion between the photographic medium and hierarchies of power. Informed by her own experience with migration and cultural displacement, Afshar’s work takes the intrusiveness of the camera as a point of departure to unpack the relationship among truth, power and the image while disrupting traditional image-making conventions.

Afshar’s works have been exhibited widely in Australia and abroad. In 2023, her first major survey exhibition opened at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney accompanied by a publication. It was in 2021, that her first monograph Speak the Wind was published by MACK in London. Other exhibitions include: Show it, Grow it!, Museum Folkwang, Essen (2024), Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah Biennial 15, Sharjah (2023), The National 4: Australian Art Now (2023), STILL ALIVE, Aichi Triennial, Nagoya (2022); Between the Sun and the Moon, Lahore Biennale, Lahore (2020), Speak the Wind, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne (2022).

Afshar was a recipient of The Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in 2021. She was awarded the National Photographic Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra in 2015, and the Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne in 2018. Afshar holds a PhD in Creative Arts from the Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia.