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Hoda Afshar’s multiple award-winning works have broken new ground for the art of image-making internationally in their technical brilliance and striking content. Afshar’s art presents forceful challenges to the way we see and understand the movement of peoples and their relationships to space and place. She speaks truth to power and gives voice to the marginalised. Extending the impact of documentary image-making, Afshar works across both photography and the moving image and invites audiences to confront political, physical and emotional displacement through the interplay of bodies, architecture, fabric and landscape.

The people captured in her art include those marginalised or persecuted. The powerful portraits in emerged within a video installation collaboration with asylum seekers incarcerated on Manus Island, PNG—including Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist, writer, and filmmaker. Her multi-modal, award-winning portraits and video illuminates the courage of whistle blowers calling out misconduct and wrongdoings in Australian institutions. And, —selections of which are displayed in this exhibition— Afshar records her changing bonds to her homeland, Iran—its beauty, history and distance from Australia.

The dramatic images below reflect not only her artistry and technical skill and her values but also her diverse career in communicating across fields to many audiences. During her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Azad University of Art and Architecture in Iran, she worked as a photojournalist for Hamvatan newspaper. After moving to Australia in 2007 she shared her knowledge with students at Curtin University of Technology where she finished her PhD in Creative Arts (2019). Her engagement with teaching continues in her role lecturing in Photography Studies at Victoria College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Afshar is also a member of ‘—a collective of contemporary artists, writers and curators amplifying dynamic conversations about Muslim Artists in Australia.

We invite you to explore Afshar’s powerful artworks depicting the people and landscapes of her homeland, Iran, where its cities were key trading hubs of the ancient Silk Roads.

Hoda Afshar, from the series In the exodus, I love you more (2014 - Ongoing). Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.