Hoda Afshar is an Iranian artist who now resides in Melbourne, Australia. Her work traditionally looks at migration, exile, displacement, and those from marginalised groups. In her new work, ‘Speak the Wind’ (published by MACK in 2021) Afshar journeys across the Strait of Hormuz, a cluster of islands located off the southern coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf to explore these concepts through a local mythology known as ‘Zār’.

‘Zār’ is known in the region as a demonic spirit-wind known to cause illness and disease. Working in tandem with the Island’s inhabitants, Afshar documents ritualistic ‘exorcisms’ and captures their own vision of the spirits through childlike drawings, presenting psychological and mystical renders of monsters and demons and manifestations of diasporic culture and spirituality.

The Islands share a complicated past in relation to colonial histories and migration, in particular the movement of slaves from northern and eastern Africa. In this work, Afshar presents a visual metaphor for possession – of land, of bodies, and of history. Adopting a rigorous research basis and collaborative techniques, Afshar works to visualise the invisible, oscillating between epic, alien landscapes in ghostly black and white, to unconventional portraits where sitters refused to meet our gaze. These other-worldly environments also serve to emphasis the concept of the ‘alien’, a term often used to describe refugees, foreigners, or outsiders and the underlying subject of the work.

Hoda Afshar was born in Tehran, Iran (1983), and is now based in 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. Afshar began her career as a documentary photographer in Iran in 2005 and moved to Australia in 2007 where she now teaches and practices as a visual artist.

Working across photography and moving-image, she considers the representation of gender, marginality, and displacement. She employs processes that disrupt traditional image-making practices, play with the presentation of imagery, or merge aspects of conceptual, staged, and documentary photography.