art.wikisort.org - Artist

Hoda Afshar (born 1983) is an Iranian documentary photographer who is based in Melbourne. She is known for her 2018 prize-winning portrait of Kurdish-Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, who suffered a long imprisonment in the Manus Island detention centre run by the Australian Government. Her work has been featured in many exhibitions and is held in many permanent collections across Australia.

Hoda Afshar
Born	1983 (age 38–39) Tehran
Nationality	Iranian
Known for	documentary photography
Notable work	Remain (2018)
Awards	National Photographic Portrait Prize (2015), Bowness Photography Prize (2018), Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture (2019) (finalist)
Website	hodaafshar.com

Early life, education and early career

Afshar was born in Tehran, Iran in 1983. She earned a Bachelor degree in Fine Art (Photography) at the Azad University of Art and Architecture in Tehran, and began her career as a photographer in 2005. She moved to Australia in 2007, and completed her PhD in Creative Arts at Curtin University in 2019, with the subject of her thesis being "images of Islamic female identity".[1][2]

Career

Her first project, in 2005, was a series of black and white photographs documenting Tehran's underground parties called Scene, but she could not show them in public.[1]

Afshar's two-channel video work, Remain (2018), includes spoken poetry by Kurdish-Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani and Iranian poet Bijan Elahi. Afshar describes her method as "staged documentary", in which the men on the island are able to "re-enact their narratives with their own bodies and [gives] them autonomy to narrate their own stories". The video was shown as part of the Primavera 2018 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney, from 9 November 2018 to 3 February 2019.[3][4][5] One of the photographs of Boochani taken for this project won the Bowness Photography Prize.[6][7] This portrait, along with several others taken as part of the Remain project, are held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.[8]

Afshar was the subject of a Compass program on ABC Television in 2019,[9] and in the same year was a judge for the National Portrait Gallery's National Photographic Portrait Prize.[1]

In March 2021, an exhibition of Afshar's portraits of nine whistleblowers was mounted at St Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne, in an exhibition named Agonistes (after the Greek word agonistes, meaning a person engaged in a struggle).[1][10][11]

Afshar says that her work explores how photographs may be "used or misused by power systems create certain hierarchies between people"; and that "[documentary photography] is a visual language that has been formed and established through the lens of colonisation".[1]

Current positions

As of 2021^[update] Afshar teaches at the Victorian College of the Arts and Photography Studies College in Melbourne.[1] She is also a board member of the Centre for Contemporary Photography.[12]

Awards and recognition

• Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize (2015), finalist for Dog's Breakfast[13]
• National Photographic Portrait Prize (2015), winner for Portrait of Ali[14]
• Bowness Photography Prize (2017), finalist for Untitled #1[15][16]
• Sotheby's Australia People's Choice Award (2018), winner for Portrait of Behrouz Boochani, Manus Island[7]
• Bowness Photography Prize (2018), winner for Portrait of Behrouz Boochani, Manus Island[7]
• Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture (2019), finalist for Portrait of Shamindan & Ramsiyar Manus Island[17]
• Ramsay Art Prize (2021), Art Gallery of South Australia; finalist[18][19] and People's Choice Prize, for Agonistes[20]
• Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship (2021), an award of A$160,000 given to mid-career creatives and thought leaders[21]

Publications

• Speak the Wind (Mack, 2021; photographs by Hoda Afhsar; essay by Michael Taussig[22]) This work documents the landscapes and people of the islands of Hormuz, Qeshm, and Hengam, in the Persian Gulf off the south coast of Iran.[23][24] Afshar got to know some of the people there, travelling there frequently over the years, and they told her about the history of the place. She said that "their narrations led the project", and she explores "the idea of being possessed by history, and in this context, the history of slavery and cruelty”.[25]

Selected exhibitions

Solo

• Behold (2017), Centre for Contemporary Photography[26]
• Remain (2018–9), consisting of a video and a series of black-and-white portraits, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney;[1] University of Queensland Art Museum[27]
• Agonistes (18 February – 7 March 2021), St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne[1][10]
• Speak the Wind (29 April – 22 May 2022), Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne. One of a series of official exhibitions of PHOTO 2022: International Festival of Photography, taking place in Melbourne and regional Victoria[28]

Group

• Primavera (2018), Museum of Contemporary Art Australia[29]
• Enough خلص Khalas: Contemporary Australian Muslim Artists (2018), UNSW Galleries[30]
• Women in Photography 2019: Remedy for Rage (2019), Objectifs[31]
• The Shouting Valley (2019), Gus Fisher Gallery,[32] (2020) The Physics Room[33]
• Just Not Australian (2019), Artspace Visual Arts Centre[34]
• Defining Place/Space: Contemporary Photography from Australia (2019), Museum of Photographic Arts[35]
• Civilization: The Way We Live Now (2019), National Gallery of Victoria[36][37]
• Refracted Reality (2020), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts[38]
• f_OCUS (2020), Counihan Gallery[39]
• The Burning World (2020), Bendigo Art Gallery[40]

Collections

Afshar's work is held in the following permanent collections:

• National Gallery of Victoria (Remain,[41] Untitled #5,[42] Untitled #4,[43] and Untitled #3[44])
• Monash Gallery of Art (Untitled #4,[45] Untitled #1,[46] and Portrait of Behrouz Boochani, Manus Island[47])
• Art Gallery of New South Wales (Remain,[48] Ibrahim Mahjid,[49] Behrouz Boochani,[50] Emad Moradi,[51] and Ari Sirwan[52])
• Monash University Museum of Art (Behold #1, Behold #6, and Behold #12)[53]
• University of Queensland Art Museum (Remain)[27]
• Murdoch University Art Gallery: (Westoxicated #7, Westoxicated #9, Westoxicated #3, Westoxicated #1, Westoxicated #5, and Westoxicated #4)[54]
• Buxton Contemporary (University of Melbourne) (Westoxicated #1, Westoxicated #2, Westoxicated #4, Westoxicated #5, Westoxicated #6, Westoxicated #7, and Westoxicated #9)[55]
• Deakin University Art Collection[56]
• Art Gallery of Western Australia (Remain)[57]

References

Further reading

• Afshar, Hoda (5 July 2020). "Hoda Afshar". Artist Profile (Interview). Interviewed by Shkembi, Nur. This interview was originally published in Artist Profile, Issue 45, 2018
• Afshar, Hoda (24 February 2021). "Hoda Afshar and Clarice Beckett" (Audio). ABC Radio National (Interview). The Art Show. Interviewed by Benson, Namila. Expires: Sat 27 Apr 2024. Afshar talks about Agonistes.

External links

• Official website

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