Hoda Afshar’s decade long research-based practice explores how the medium of photography became a central tool of colonialisation through its representations of Islamic women. Her work The Fold, 2023, is a result of research undertaken at Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, where Afshar encountered an archive of thousands of images that French psychiatrist and photographer Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934) took in Morocco in the early 1900s of veiled Islamic women, and sometimes men, through which he sought to explore his psychoanalytic ideas about covering and fantasy.
NGV Curator of Contemporary Art, Kat Prugger speaks with Afshar about this work and the research behind this project.
Hoda Afshar’s works are held in collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Gallery of Victoria; Art Gallery of South Australia; Auckland University Art Collection, Monash University of Modern Art Collection; Art Gallery of New South Wales and Art Gallery of South Australia. Afshar was a recipient of The Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in 2021. She was awarded the National Photographic Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra in 2015, and the Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne in 2018. Afshar holds a PhD in Creative Arts from the Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia.