Hoda Afshar is an Iranian visual artist and documentary filmmaker who examines the complex entanglements among politics and aesthetics, knowledge and representation, and visibility and violence. Her work investigates how images can either sustain or unsettle dominant forms of perception as well as the forces that condition what becomes thinkable or perceptible. By foregrounding aspects of the political and visual order that have been marginalised or obscured, her works encourage viewers to reconsider how and what they see. 

While photography and video remain central to her practice, Afshar engages a wide range of materials and strategies including archival imagery, text and sound. Her methods span 3D imaging, printing, mirror-making and collaborative documentary processes, often incorporating participant-led interventions that challenge conventional representational frameworks.
Afshar’s work has been extensively exhibited and published, held in numerous public and private collections such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, MoMA in New York, the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris, KADIST in Paris, the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, the Getty Museum Collection in the United States, the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation in Germany, the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, among others. Her first major survey A Curve is a Broken Line opened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2023 and was accompanied by a publication.

Over the course of her career, she has received numerous awards, including Australia’s National Photographic Portrait Prize (2015& 2025), the Bowness Photography Prize (2018), and the Ramsay Art Prize People’s Choice Award (2021). In 2022, she was awarded the Royal Photographic Society’s Hood Medal, and she is currently completing a year-long fellowship with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program for 2025. Her first monograph Speak the Wind was published by MACK in London in 2021. Her second monograph The Fold was released by Loose Joints in France to accompany her solo exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris in September 2025.