Hoda Afshar. Performing the Invisible, the first exhibition in France devoted to the Iranian artist and photographer, brings together two of her recent works: Speak the wind (2015-2020), a photo and video installation exploring the beliefs surrounding the winds on the islands of the Strait of Hormuz on Iran’s southern coast, and The Fold (2023-2025), the fruit of the artist’s visual explorations in the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac’s photographic collections.
Born in Tehran in 1983 and now based in Melbourne, Hoda Afshar is one of the most innovative visual artists on the Australian contemporary scene. In her practice, she explores and questions the potential and limits of the photographic medium.
For the past fourteen years, Hoda Afshar has been developing an artistic practice at the intersection of conceptual and documentary images, exploring the representation of gender, marginality and displacement. Fascinated by the potential of documentary images to make hidden realities visible, the artist critiques the historical and current links between the photographic medium and power structures.
SPEAK THE WIND
On the islands of the Strait of Hormuz, off the southern coast of Iran, there is a common belief that the winds can possess a person, bringing misfortune and disease. The existence of similar convictions in some African countries suggests that the cult may have been brought to Iran from southeast Africa through the Arab slave trade.
This history is rarely spoken about but these winds and the traces they have left on the islands and their inhabitants are the touchstone for Speak The Wind.
Comprising a video, a series of poetic, suggestive images and drawings of the spirit of the wind by local residents, the work attempts to picture the wind and its psychic entanglements. Without explicitly exposing her project, Hoda Afshar reflects on and constructs her installation in opposition to ethnographic and documentary work.
THE FOLD
The Fold is the fruit of Hoda Afshar’s research into the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac’s historical photography collection, and her visual explorations of an emblematic collection of a thousand photographs taken in Morocco by Gaëtan de Clérambault between 1918 and 1919, featuring women and men dressed in the traditional white veil. Working in Morocco during the protectorate period, de Clérambault documented draping techniques through his images.
Based on these historical photographs, the artist uses various visual strategies and artistic techniques to question de Clérambault’s motives. The work consists of a photographic installation, a set of printed mirrors, a sound creation and a video. The Fold provides the artist with the opportunity to explore how the photographic medium became a central tool for French colonisers in North Africa, and how it helped shape representations and imaginings of the region.
Press release from musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
Image: Hoda Afshar. From the series Speak the Wind. 2015–2020. Inkjet photographic prints. Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Milani, Brisbane, Australia
