Hoda Afshar (b. Iran 1983) is a visual artist and documentary maker whose practice focuses on the intricate relationships between politics and aesthetics, knowledge and representation, visibility and violence. She is interested in the ways that image-making can either reinforce or challenge our common sense, and the forces that shape perception. Her works invite audiences to reflect on and to rethink how and what we see, often by drawing attention to parts of the political and visible order that have previously been excluded. Hoda’s artistic practice embraces a variety of media and approaches – primarily using photography and video, though her recent projects have involved working with archival images and other materials including text and sound elements. She has employed diverse techniques ranging from 3D photography and printing to mirror making, and her documentary projects often involve collaborating with participants, and other forms of intervention that disrupt traditional approaches Hoda’s work has been widely exhibited and published online and in print, and is part of numerous private and public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, KADIST in Paris, National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, Getty Museum Collection in the USA, Deutsche Börse Photograph Foundation in Germany, National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Art Gallery of NSW and more. Her first major survey exhibition A Curve is a Broken Line opened at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney in 2023, accompanied by a publication. Throughout her career, Hoda has received numerous prestigious art awards and prizes such as the Australia’s National Photographic Portrait Prize (2015), the Bowness Photography Prize (2018), and the Ramsay Art Prize people’s choice award (2021). She received a Hood Medal from the Royal Photographic Society, UK in 2022, and is currently completing a one-year fellowship as part of the DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Program 2025. Hoda’s first monograph, Speak the Wind, was published by MACK in London in 2021. Her second monograph, The Fold, was published this year by Loose Joints. Hoda is represented by Milani Gallery in Brisbane, Australia
Hoda Afshar
Iran
Remain
Remain was made in collaboration with several of the men who still remain on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, six or more years after they left their homelands to seek asylum in Australia, but instead were sent to languish in the remote offshore detention centre. The series involves these men retelling their individual and shared stories through staged images, words, and poetry, and bearing witness to life in the Manus camps: from the death friends and dreams of freedom, to the strange air of beauty, boredom, and violence that surrounds them on the island.