UQ Art Museum’s new exhibition Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line fuses art with activism
Queensland audiences are finally getting the chance to experience the works of one of Australia’s leading names in photo-media. Following its critically acclaimed run at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line will launch at UQ Art Museum on July 16. The fiercely anticipated new exhibition continues Hoda’s career-long dialogue on identity, marginality and displacement through a stirring series of photography and video. Keep reading to find out more …
The Tehran-born artist Hoda Afshar migrated to Australia at the age of 24, after studying documentary photography in her home country. Holding a PhD from Curtin University, Hoda examines the relationship between the photographic medium and power. Her practice has remained tethered to her Iranian identity – questioning, challenging and complicating its dominant depictions in her adopted country.
This upcoming mid-career survey Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line is an Art Gallery of New South Wales touring exhibition, curated by Isobel Parker Phillips. First debuted in 2023, the exhibition marked the artist’s first solo show by a major public institution. Through a combination of Hoda’s photography and film from the past decade and newly commissioned pieces, the exhibition balances activism with artistic inquiry. “Hoda’s approach is unique in that she makes us contend with brutality, not through blunt imagery but through evocation,” shares exhibition curator, Isobel. “Her work is anchored in compassion yet also radical in the way it wrestles with injustice.”
In Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line, the camera is used to give both visibility and humanity to those who have been denied it. The exhibition includes the likes of Hoda’s 2023 large-scale photographic series, which considers the experiences of Iranian-Australian women who watched the Mahsa Amini protests from afar. UQ Art Museum will also exhibit early works such as the provocative 2018 film Remain which was secretly made on Manus Island and follows a group of stateless asylum seekers enduring Australia’s border protection policy.
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The exhibition opens 16 July and continues until 14 December.
Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line is an Art Gallery of New South Wales touring exhibition.
Image one: Hoda Afshar Crease 2014, from the series In the exodus, I love you more 2014–ongoing © Hoda Afshar, image courtesy the artist
Image two: Hoda Afshar Agonistes 2020 (video still, detail), from the series Agonistes 2020 © Hoda Afshar, image courtesy the artist
Image three: Hoda Afshar Untitled #88, from the series Speak the wind 2015–22 © Hoda Afshar, image courtesy the artistImage four: Hoda Afshar Remain (video still, detail), from the series Remain 2018 © Hoda Afshar, image courtesy the artistImage five: Hoda Afshar Remain (video still, detail), from the series Remain 2018 © Hoda Afshar, image courtesy the artist
This article was written in collaboration with our friends at UQ Art Museum.