Hoda Afshar – Speak the Wind

On the islands in the Strait of Hormuz, off the southern coast of Iran, there is a common belief that the winds can possess a person and bring illness or disease. The presence of similar convictions in some African countries suggests that this notion may have been brought to Iran from southeast Africa through the Arab slave trade and centuries of cultural and economic exchange. 

This history is rarely spoken of, but these winds and the marks they have left on the islands and their inhabitants are the touchstone for Hoda Afshar’s Speak The Wind.

Through her subtle and perceptive images of extraordinary landscapes, people, and their rituals, Afshar’s intricate and beautiful project attempts to picture the wind and its psychic entanglements, to form a visible record of the invisible.

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» GET TO KNOW THE ARTIST «

Hoda Afshar born in Iran, based in Australia. 

At the intersection of conceptual, staged and documentary image-making, Hoda Afshar’s artistic practice explores the representation of gender, marginality and displacement, based on her own personal experience.

Afshar’s first monograph, Speak the Wind, was published by MACK in London in 2021. In 2023, her first major survey exhibition was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, accompanied by a publication. Her works have been widely exhibited both in Australia and abroad, and have been recognised with several awards. In 2021, she was awarded the Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship.