Opening Saturday: Hoda Afshar in conversation with Isobel Parker Philip

Join artist Hoda Afshar in conversation with curator Isobel Parker Philip on the opening weekend of Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line, the first major solo exhibition by one of Australia’s most innovative and unflinching photomedia artists. 

Through her photographs and moving image works, Iranian-born, Melbourne-based Hoda Afshar examines the politics of image-making. Deeply researched yet emotionally sensitive, her work can be seen as a form of activism as much as an artistic inquiry. 

This is a free event. All attendees must register and show tickets to UQ Art Museum Staff upon entry. 

Please inform us of any accessibility requirements through the registration page. Please note that a two week lead time is required to secure Auslan interpretation for this event. Visit our website for our accessibility information.  

Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line is an Art Gallery of New South Wales touring exhibition.  

Image: Hoda Afshar Untitled #18, from the series Speak the wind 2015–22 © Hoda Afshar, image courtesy the artist. 

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Hoda Afshar was born in Tehran, Iran (1983), and is now based in Melbourne, Australia. She completed a Bachelor degree in Fine Art– Photography in Tehran, and her PhD thesis in Creative Arts at Curtin University.   

At the intersection of conceptual, staged and documentary image-making, Hoda Afshar’s artistic practice explores the representation of gender, marginality and displacement. Initially drawn to the potential of the documentary image to unearth hidden realities, she is equally committed to critiquing the collusion between the photographic medium and hierarchies of power. Informed by her own experience with migration and cultural displacement, Afshar’s work takes the intrusiveness of the camera as a point of departure to unpack the relationship among truth, power and the image while disrupting traditional image-making conventions.   

Afshar’s works are held in major collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Kadist Collection in Paris, National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Auckland University Art Collection, the University of Queensland Art Museum, the Monash University of Modern Art Collection, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of South Australia.   

Her works have been exhibited widely in Australia and abroad. In 2023, her first major survey exhibition opened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney accompanied by a publication. It was in 2021, that her first monograph Speak the Wind was published by MACK in London. Other exhibitions include: Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah Biennial 15, Sharjah (2023), The National 4: Australian Art Now (2023), STILL ALIVE, Aichi Triennial, Nagoya (2022); Between the Sun and the Moon, Lahore Biennale, Lahore (2020), Speak the Wind, Monash Gallery of Art & PHOTO 2022 Festival of Photography, Melbourne (2022). 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. 

Isobel Parker Philip is Director, Curatorial and Collection at the National Portrait Gallery. She was previously the Senior Curator, Contemporary Australian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where she curated exhibitions including Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line (2023–24) and, with Erin Vink, the Art Gallery’s curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island (2022–23). Parker Philip was the Art Gallery’s curator for The National 2019: New Australian Art. Formerly the Art Gallery’s Curator of Photography, other past projects include Shadow Catchers (2020–21), Hold Still: The Photographic Performance (2018), New Matter: Recent Forms of Photography (2016–17) and Imprint: Photography and the Impressionable Image (2016). She has independently curated exhibitions in a range of institutional contexts, most recently Garden Variety: Photography, Politics and the Picturesque at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria for the PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. Parker Philip sits on the board of Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA). Her writing has been published extensively.