Hoda Afshar was born in Tehran, Iran (1983), and is now based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. She completed a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art–Photography in Tehran, and her Ph.D. thesis in Creative Arts at Curtin University. Asfar began her career as a documentary photographer in Iran in 2005, and since 2007 she has been living in Australia where she practices as a visual artist and lectures in photography and fine art.
Asfar explores the nature and possibilities of documentary image-making. Working across photography and moving-image, she considers the representation of gender, marginality, and displacement.
Her work has been widely exhibited both locally and internationally and published online and in print. In 2023, her first major survey exhibition opened at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney accompanied by a publication. Her work is part of numerous private and public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, KADIST in Paris, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Art Gallery of NSW and more.
Untitled 7 (from in turn series), 2024
Digital print on Canson Rag Photographique 310gsm
Certificate signed and numbered
420 x 594 mm
Unframed
Hoda Asfar’s series titled In Turn, was made in response to the feminist uprising that began in Iran in September 2022, following the death of 22-year-old Jina Amini. Amini had been arrested by Iran's morality police for not wearing the hijab in a way that they considered appropriate. The photographs are a tribute and a testament to collective action and collective grief.
The women in the series are, like Afshar, Iranian Australians who have watched the protests unfold from afar. Dressed in black, they cluster together and braid each other's hair. This is a direct allusion to the images on social media of women in Iran defiantly discarding the veil, and to a practice common among Kurdish female fighters who plait each other's hair before heading into battle against the Islamic State.
In Untitled 7, two doves are released. Often a symbol of peace, here they also reference grief felt by so many in Iran. When protesters are killed, their family and friends release birds into the sky. The twines of a plait are referred to as pichesh-e-moo in Farsi, meaning the turn or fold of the hair. A revolution is a turning point, but it is never without loss.
In Turn was included in the South London Gallery’s 2024 exhibition, Acts of Resistance: Photography, Feminisms and the Art of Protest, organised in collaboration with the V&A.
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